Picture Credit: Twitter
Indian ace shuttler duo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty scripted history as they won India’s men’s double maiden gold at the Indonesia Open 2023 in Jakarta on Sunday, June 18. Satwik and Chirag became the first Indian pair to win a Super 1000 event. The Indian duo took down the second seeded and reigning champions Malaysian duo of Aaron Chia and Wooi Yik Soh in two straight games (21-17, 21-18) to clinch the title.
The magnitude of the win can be calculated from the fact that this was the first time that Satwiksairaj and Chirag are beating Aaron and Soh in 11 attempts. After the win, Swastiksairaj told media, “More than winning the tournament, beating them is one of the highs. When we play (them) next time, we will play all-in again.” Chirag echoed his partner’s sentiments and said, “More than winning the tournament, beating Aaron and Soo was what we truly wanted to do because we have come close in beating them, but we have sort of held ourselves back a bit. But this time we reached up to the plan and it paid huge dividends. But as Satwik said, this is just the start, we have to win even bigger tournaments.”
Rankireddy went on to say, "(We are) very happy with this performance after a bad past two months. We had become lazy and passive with thoughts like ‘it is under control’, but it is not. The last two tournaments were wake-up calls for us, ‘be alert otherwise we would be smashed in the first round only'."
On the other hand, his partner Chirag said, “Not really holding ourselves back while receiving. We have always served well against them and they have had a service and receiving is quite good.”
Earlier, the Indian pair had taken down the Korean duo of Kang Min Hyuk and Seo Seung Jae 18-21, 21-19, 21-18 to sail into the final of the tournament. With their semifinal summit, the sixth seeded Indian duo became the first ever Indian pair to reach the final of any Super 1000 event.
