All England: Ashwini-Sikki pair loses in quarters
Birmingham, Mar 19 (PTI): The women’s doubles pairing of Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy bowed out of the All England Championships after losing in straight games to Netherlands’ Selena Piek and Cheryl Seinen in the quarterfinals here on Friday.
The world number 30 Indian pairing went down 22-24 12-21 to 24th-ranked duo of Selena and Cheryl in 39 minutes.
Ashwini and Sikki had defeated 13th ranked duo of Bulgarian sisters Gabriela Stoeva and Stefani Stoeva 21-17 21-10 in just 33 minutes in the second-round match on Thursday night.
World number 10 men’s doubles pairing of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, seeded sixth, had crashed out of the event after losing 16-21 21-11 17-21 to Denmark’s Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen in the second round. It was their second consecutive defeat against the world number 13 combine, having lost to them at Swiss Open earlier this month. In the men’s singles, Sameer Verma too suffered a second successive loss to third seed Anders Antonsen of Denmark, going down 22-20 21-10 in the second round. Mixed pairing of Dhruv Kapila and Meghana Jakkampudi also bowed out after losing 19-21 8-21 to Niclas Nohr and Amalie Magelund of Denmark. Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu and young Lakshya Sen will play their quarterfinal matches against Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi and France’s Mark Caljouw later on Friday.
