CWG ’18: Tenth badminton medal as Satwik, Chirag bag silver

Gold Coast: Shuttler duo Satwik Rankireddy and Chirag Chandrashekhar Shetty settled for silver after losing to England’s Marcus Ellis and Chris Langridge in straight games in men’s doubles badminton finals in the 21st Commonwealth Games here on Sunday.

Satwik and Chirag lost 13-21 and 16-21 to Elis and Langridge as England clinched gold in the badminton competition.

In both the sets, the English shuttlers maintained their dominance as they played superior shots and showed quick reflexes to keep the fighting Indian shuttlers at bay.

Satwik and Chirag, although showed promise at the beginning of the match, they trailed behind Elis and Langridge in most parts of the game, that lasted for nearly 40 minutes.

Earlier in the day, star Indian shuttler Kidambi Srikanth ended his run at the 21st Commonwealth Games with a silver medal in the badminton men’s singles final.

The 25-year-old from Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur, who recently rose to the numero-uno spot at the BWF World Rankings, conceded defeat against Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei.

While Srikanth comfortably sealed the first game 21-19, the Malaysian shuttler bounced back in the next two games, registering a 21-19, 14-21, 14-21 victory over his Indian opponent to clinch gold.

Also, ace shuttler Saina Nehwal clinched gold after a 21-18, 23-21 victory in the all-Indian women’s singles final against her compatriot P.V. Sindhu.

Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran clinched bronze in the table tennis mixed doubles match by defeating Sharath Kamal and Mouma Das 11-6 11-2 11-4 in the bronze play-off, thus, bringing Manika her fourth medal in the Games.

Dipika Pallikal Karthik and Joshna Chinappa settled for silver in the women’s doubles squash finals. The defending champions were overthrown by New Zealand’s Joelle King and Amanda Landers-Murphy in straight games.

Sharath too ended his run at the Games with a 4-1 victory over England’s Samuel Walker in the men’s singles and clinched bronze.

With this, India’s campaign at the 2018 Commonwealth Games came to an end. They have now won a total of 66 medals, 26 gold, 20 silver and 20 bronze, bettering the tally of 64 medals the country won in Glasgow.

Hosts Australia and England occupy the top two spots in the medal tally with 198 and 136 medals respectively. (ANI)