India’s top men’s doubles pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty suffered a heartbreaking quarterfinal defeat against Malaysia’s Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik at the Paris Olympics on Thursday. The experienced Malaysian duo employed an ingenious strategy of targeting Satwik and Chirag’s return of serve that exposed their long-standing weakness.
Despite winning the opening game comfortably, Satwik-Chirag struggled to deal with Aaron’s diverse serving combinations and found themselves on the backfoot right from the start of the second game. The Malaysians focused on keeping the rallies short by mainly using flat exchanges near the net, denying India’s combination time and space to unleash their powerful smashes.
Soh Wooi Yik was equally impressive with his serving game, complementing Aaron’s skills perfectly. The flat pace of the rallies put immense defensive pressure on Satwik and Chirag, who looked nervous and committed far too many unforced errors. The average rally length was just 4 shots, rarely providing Satwik or Chirag a chance to dictate terms from the back of the court.
Trailing 0-8 historically against this pairing, Satwik acknowledged the weakness in their return game was cleverly exploited once more. While Satwik and Chirag fought hard to make it a close contest in the third game, Aaron and Soh displayed impressive composure in crucial moments to seal another win.
It was a heartbreaking end to Satwik and Chirag’s Olympic campaign, having arrived in Paris in red-hot form. However, they will take plenty of lessons on improving their defense against world-class serving pairs from this chastening experience.
