French Open 2022 badminton: Chirag Shetty-Satwiksairaj Rankireddy win maiden BWF Super 750 title
The Indian doubles pair beat Chinese Taipei’s Lu Ching Yao and Yang Po Han in the final to become the first Indian doubles team to win a Super 750 tournament.
India’s Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy won the French Open 2022 men’s doubles title on Sunday and bagged their maiden BWF Super 750 crown.
The Indian badminton pair, who knocked out Japanese top seeds Takuro Hoki and Yugo Kobayashi in the quarters, beat Chinese Taipei’s Lu Ching Yao and Yang Po Han 21-13, 21-19 in the final.
This was Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy’s fourth BWF World Tour title, but the previous three were lower tier tournaments. Their first, the Hyderabad Open 2018, was a Super 100 tournament while the Thailand Open 2019 and India Open 2022 were both Super 500 events.
The win also makes Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy the first Indian doubles pair to clinch a BWF Super 750 crown. The duo had also made it to the 2019 French Open final but lost the title decider to Indonesian aces Marcus Fernaldi Gideon and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo.
This was also the first time since Partho Ganguli and Vikram Singh’s triumph in 1983 that an Indian men’s doubles pair won the French Open badminton title.
Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, the seventh seeds in the tournament and current world No. 8 rated men’s doubles pair in the world badminton rankings, made a strong start and picked up the first five points of the match to set the tone.
The Indian duo, playing their aggressive brand of badminton, comfortably controlled the opening game and closed it out with ease.
Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, who were playing their Chinese Taipei opponents for the very first time, continued the momentum in the second game and went into the mid-game interval with a comfortable six-point lead.
Lu Ching Yao and Yang Po Han, however, showed character and clawed their way back into the contest and levelled the score at 14-all.
The comeback clearly marked a momentum switch in the match as Lu Ching Yao and Yang Po Han fought hard to take a 19-17 lead.
However, the in-form Indian pair, who became the Commonwealth Games champions in Birmingham earlier this year, showed extreme maturity to hold their nerves to secure the game, match and title.