Glasgow: On a strong day for the Indians singles challenge at the Badminton World Championships in Glasgow, the women’s doubles pair of Ashwini Ponnappa and Sikki Reddy went down fighting in a tense second round match to Denmark’s Kamila Rytter Juhl and Christinna Pedersen, who are the second seeds at the competition.

The Indian pair lost a very tight first game that lasted for more than 30 minutes, then took the second game to challenge the higher ranked pair, but lost out in the decider to lose 22-24, 21-17, 15-21 in 72 minutes.

After the match, Ponnappa spoke to The Field in a live chat from Glasgow about the match, her partnership with Reddy, the positives she will take from the world championship show and more.

Despite the loss, the 27-year-old was happy with the way she and her partner fought on the court to take the game to a decider. “Juhl-Pederson are a top pair and have a lot of experience. It wasn’t going to be easy but it would have been great had it gone the other way. Having said that, there are a lot of positives to take away from this match: we know we can play some really good badminton and get to the top if we continue playing at this same level,” she said.

Talking about the her eight-month old partnership with Reddy, Ponnappa who has a world championship bronze with former partner Jwalla Gutta, was confident that the duo have a long road ahead of them.

“Partnership with Sikki has come a long way because it has been only eight months since the two of us have started playing together.But from those three tournaments to playing the a really good tournament in January at Syed Modi and get a lot of wins was really positive and helped us boost our confidence and give us this positive idea that yes we can do really well. Over the last few months we have had some good matches against some good players and some bad matches against players against whom we should have won. So, I am happy that in the first round, though it was a tricky match, Sikki and I hung in there and played a solid game and didn’t really give them a chance because that is important,” she told The Field.

“In the last couple of months, every time we have played an easier pair, we have bungled up by either getting pressure get to us or not really playing our game. So that’s another positive to take from this tournament because we went on to the court with the intention that come what may, we are going to play our game and focus on our game rather than the opponents,” she added.

Going forward, Ponnappa said she is looking at doing well in both women’s and mixed doubles, with a focus on the Commonwealth and Asian Games next year

Watch the full interview here

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