As India began their Thomas Cup title-defense at Chengdu, China, expectations were at an all-time high.

The group of players were the same and with all of them in reasonably good form, a successful campaign was on the cards.

India’s opponents, however, we ready and waiting to ambush the defending champions.

Fewer errors

For India, the outcome of Satwik-Chirag’s matches was beyond crucial in the quarter-final. If the duo could post a win, the balance of the tie would swing in India’s favour.

China, however, had a trick up their sleeve in Lee Zii Jia and Liang Wei Keng.

“He made a lot of unforced errors, while I made fewer errors, and that was positive for me. I’m happy I could handle the pressure and win a point for the team,” said Lee Zii Jia.

“They are a very difficult pair to beat. We had to challenge them on every point. Fu Haifeng told us that the start of every game was going to be crucial, so we were focused on that,” added Liang Wei Keng.

Inability to scale up

Both Satwik and Chirag knew what was in store for them – longer rallies and an aggressive style of play.

“Whenever we played longer rallies, we were scoring points. It was a service-receive game, it was about dominating the first three-four strokes. If you want to beat them, you have to play at a much higher level that what we did today,” said Chirag Shetty.

That said, despite clawing back to level the match, they were overpowered in the third and in doing so, lost their second successive match to bow out in disappointing fashion.

Meanwhile, Lakshya Sen was the lone bright spark in the quarter-final.

“When I was in there, I didn’t think about the situation we were in. I was just trying to take it to another game, and another match. We’ve been playing each other since our junior days. The conditions today were a bit tricky; the home crowd was pumped up,” said Lakshya Sen.