World Badminton Championship 2025: Satwik-Chirag win bronze
In the semi-finals of the World Badminton Championship 2025, the pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty lost to China’s 11th seeded Chen Boyang and Liu Yi in the men’s doubles semi-finals. With this defeat, India’s journey in the tournament ended and they had to be content with the bronze medal. A day after confirming the medal for India, Satwik and Chirag had a chance to become the first Indian men’s doubles pair to reach the final of the World Championship, but on Saturday evening, they were eliminated from the tournament after losing 19-21, 21-18, 12-21 in a semi-final match that lasted 67 minutes.
Satwik-Chirag suffered fifth defeat in the semi-finals
This was the first defeat of the Indian pair in two matches against the Chinese pair. Earlier, they had to face defeat in the final of Thailand Open last year. This was Satwik-Chirag’s fifth semi-final defeat this year after the Indian, Singapore, Malaysian and China Open. The Indian pair started the match with a bang and took a 4-0 lead in the beginning and were ahead in the match with a lead of 11-5 till the middle stage.
Satwik-Chirag won second bronze medal in World Championship
After the break, the Chinese pair made a strong comeback and took a 14-13 lead and won the first match on the third game point. In the second game, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty again took a 5-1 lead, however, their lead was reduced to 11-9 at the interval. In the last game, Chen Boyang and Liu Yi turned the tables in a spectacular fashion and took a 9-0 lead and defeated the Indian pair to seal their place in the final. This is Satwik-Chirag’s second bronze medal in the BWF World Championship, earlier they had won the bronze medal in Tokyo in 2022. With the victory of Satwik-Chirag, India has maintained its streak of winning medals in the World Badminton Championship, which has been going on since 2011.
