Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Chirag Shetty stun reigning world champions Hui and Chen to win Thailand Open

 India's  Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty stunned the reigning world champions Li Jun Hui and Liu Yu Chen in the final of Thailand Open to become the first Indian pair to win a BWF Super 500 badminton tournament, here on Sunday.

The Indian pair go the better of third-seeded Chinese combo 21-19, 18-21, 21-18 in 62 minutes to win their biggest career title.

Speaking after the match, Rankireddy said: “I was not playing like usual but I kept telling myself that it’s just one more match, one more match. I was so calm and whenever I got a chance, I wanted to finish the shot. I could see that they didn’t want to lift the shuttle for me.”

Meanwhile, Shetty said: “I can’t believe that we’ve just beaten the current world champs. They are really good attacking players so our plan was to keep the shuttle low. We varied our shots. We played a few flat shots but then they rushed to the net so we decided that Satwik would play a few hard smashes and I would play some soft shots down to the net. Their defence is usually very good too but I think at their height, it looked like they were struggling to come forward low at the net.”