Ashwini Ponnappa and Sikki Reddy’s great run came to an end at the USD 17,500 Welsh International in Cardiff on Saturday as the Indian women doubles duo failed to cross the final hurdle. Ponnappa and Reddy went down 16-21, 11-21 to the top seeds and World No. 29 Anastasia Chervyakova and Olga Morozova of Russia in 37 minutes.
This is just the second tournament together for the Indian pair, who teamed up only after the long-standing pair of Jwala Gutta and Ponnappa split last month. The Scottish Open Grand Prix was the first event that they played where they crashed out in the second round.
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But they rebounded from that early loss in a majestic fashion by reaching the summit clash at Cardiff the very next week.
They won four matches which included a quarter-final upset of the third-seeded British pairing of Jenny Moore and Victoria Williams in straight games.
In the final, the 29th ranked team of Chervyakova and Morozova proved a mountain too high for the Indians to climb. The initial stages of the opening game saw the two locked in a gritty battle that put the Indians marginally ahead at 7-6. The Russians, however, stormed back to take the next five points for an 11-7 advantage at the mid-game interval.
Post-break, the Indians got as close as 10-11 before seeing the unstoppable Russians take the opener quite comfortably.
The second game was pretty much one-sided right from the start as the unseeded Indians found the setback difficult to recover from. They quickly found themselves trailing 1-5 and the gap only widened further to 5-11 at the interval.
They could not provide any resistance even after the break and the top seeds reached 17-10 in no time and closed out the win soon after.
They were the only Indians to make it to a summit showdown at this tournament after the second-seeded mixed doubles combine of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy bowed out in the semi-finals.
In men’s doubles too, the sixth seeds Jishnu Sanyal and Shivam Sharma lost to the third seeds Liao Kuan Hao and Lu Chia Pin in the semi-finals.
