Indiaâs Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty assured themselves a medal at the BWF World Championships in Paris after beating Malaysiaâs Aaron Chia and Wooi Yik Soh in the quarterfinal. This will be the Indian pairâs second world championship medal, following a bronze in the 2022 edition. The quarterfinal win also helped Satwik-Chirag avenge their defeat to the same Malaysian pair in the 2024 Paris Olympics quarterfinals at the same venue. âIt was a rematch of sorts from the Olympics and I think we finally got some redemption. It was the same court, same arena, a year back exactly. Itâs always a pleasure playing against them. Weâve always had some really tough battles at the biggest of events and really happy we could win today,â said Chirag after the win. Satwik-Chirag outclassed their opponents in straight games, a margin which took even them by a little surprise. âIn the second game, when we were leading, I was thinking for sure we would not win this easily. I was telling myself, âDonât hurry for the pointâ. I had a belief that we were under control, no need to panic, because we only gave [away] a few points there. âThey were under pressure, I sensed that. As I said before, we just want to play our A game and see where weâll end up. Thatâs what we are doing from the first match. We are just focusing on ourselves, not on the opponents. We are really happy the way we played today,â added Satwik. Satwik and Chirag will now take on World No. 11 Li Yiu and Bo Yang Chen of China in their semifinal on Saturday.
