The 19th Asian Games have been quite successful for India thus far, if not spectacular as yet. However, there have been a few pieces of history already. For example, the equestrian team of Hriday Chheda, Anush Agarwalla, Divyakriti Singh and Sudipti Hajela won the country's first-ever gold medal in the sport last week.
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Today, at the Binjiang Gymnasium, there was hope for more history to be created, as India's men's badminton team were in contention for the gold medal, as they were up against host nation China in the final.
Unfortunately, India went down 2-3 against China in the final and settled for the silver medal. Even a loss is quite historic as this is India's best performance at the Asian Games after a silver medal won by PV Sindhu in 2018.
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Satwik-Chirag pair led star-studded Indian team
The Indian team for the final consisted of Mithun Manjunath, Lakshya Sen and K Srikanth in the singles category, with the duos of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy/Chirag Shetty and Sai Pratheek/Dhruv Kapila participating in the doubles category.
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Satwik/Chirag are currently ranked No 3 in the world, and managed to win the Korean Open in July earlier this year. Sen won the Canada Open and made the semifinals of the US Open and Japan Open in 2023 in a promising season early on in his career. HS Prannoy was also part of the team but missed the final due to an injury.
In the singles category, Lakshya Sen beat Shi Yuqi 22-20, 14-21, 21-18 but Mithun Manjunath and K Srikanth lost their games.
In the doubles category, Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy beat Weikeng Liang and Chang Wang 21-15, 21-18 but Sai Pratheek/Dhruv Kapila lost their game and handed China the tie.
What was the Indian men's badminton team's last title?
The men's team created history at the 2022 Thomas Cup, winning India's first-ever title at the tournament, breaking the stranglehold of China and Indonesia.
Their victory also ensured that the last five Thomas Cup tournaments have had different winners; India (2022), Indonesia (2020), China (2018), Denmark (2016), and Japan (2014).
Despite the Thomas Cup being open to teams across the globe, the Asian Games have in fact proven more difficult for India to crack. Even though badminton is played across the world, and is quite popular in European countries, like Denmark, Asia remains powerhouse.
With teams like China, Indonesia and Japan, to name a few, competing in the continental event, winning gold was a near-impossible task.
Across the 15 previous editions of the men's team tournament, only four different countries had won gold; China (6 times), Indonesia (5 times), South Korea (3 times) and Thailand (1 time).
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