Satwik-Chirag duo assured a medal

DUBAI: India’s top men’s doubles pairing of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty were assured a medal at the Badminton Asia Championships after outplaying Indonesia’s experienced duo of Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan in the quarter-finals here on Friday. The Indian combination won 21-11, 21-12 and will face Chinese Taipei’s Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin in the last-four match. Earlier, PV Sindhu squandered a game’s lead to go down 21-18, 5-21, 9-21 to second seed An Se Young of Korea in the women’s singles quarter-final contest. The other Indian hope, eighth seed HS Prannoy, bowed out in the men’s singles quarter-finals after conceding his match midway against Kanta Tsuneyama from Japan. Prannoy was trailing 11-21, 9-13 when he retired due to an injury. In mixed doubles quarter-finals, qualifiers Rohan Kapoor and N Sikki Reddy battled hard before losing 18-21, 21-19, 15-21 against Dejan Ferdinansyah and Gloria Emanuelle Widjaja of Indonesia.