By IANS,
New Delhi : India’s challenge at the Asian Badminton Championship at Johor Bahru, Malaysia, ended on a disappointing note with all the men, women and the mixed doubles pairs failing to survive the second day of the event Thursday.
India’s hopes in singles competition received a setback Wednesday as all shuttlers came a cropper and bowed out in the first round, except P. Kashyap who was shown the door in the second round of the last qualifying event before the Beijing Olympics.
Women’s doubles duo of Jwala Gutta and Shruti Kurian were thrashed 10-21, 7-21 by top seed Chinese pair of Wei Yang and Jiewen Zhang in the second round. The Indian pair had defeated Fan Frances Liu and Yu Yan Vanessa Neo of Singapore 21-15 24-22 in the opening round.
In the men’s doubles, fourth seed Indonesian pair of Alvent Yulianto Chandra and Luluk Hadiyanto beat India’s top doubles duo of Rupesh Kumar and Sanave Thomas 21-7, 23-21 in the first round, while Akshay Devalkar and V. Diju pair went the farthest, losing in the second round 16-21, 14 -21 to the eighth seed Japanese combination of Keita Masuda and Tadashi Ohtsuka.
Devalkar and Diju had earlier defeated Noubani Ehad Nidal and Mohd Naser Mansour Nayef of Jordan 21-6, 21-4 in the first round.
In the mixed doubles, Diju and Gutta went down to the Indonesian pair of Anggun Nugroho and Endang Nursugianti 19-21, 15-21 in the second round.