Wounded tiger Chirag ready to pounce in individual competition

Satwik Sairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Chandrashekhar Shetty in action. - Reuters

ONE’S best success comes after one’s greatest disappointment.

That’s the positive outlook that doubles shuttler Chirag Shetty has decided to adopt as he does not want to dwell on their painful 1-3 defeat in the mixed team final to Malaysia on Tuesday.

Chirag and his partner Satwik-sairaj Rankireddy found Aaron Chia-Soh Wooi Yik too hot to handle as they went down fighting in the opening match and that defeat shook the team as India eventually lost their title defence.

“Tough one to take but the team put their best foot forward and gave it their all.

‘‘Now it’s time to shift our focus to the individual event. Let’s go India, let’s go,” Chirag posted on social media.

Chirag is now like a wounded tiger ready to pounce in the ongoing individual competition.

Chirag-Satwiksairaj are the second seeds and have received a first-round bye.

Their first real challenge will likely be in the semi-finals, either against Malaysia’s scratch pair Chan Peng Soon-Tan Kian Meng or Scotland’s Adam Hall-Dunn Alexander.

Barring any upsets, they are set to meet top seeds Aaron-Wooi Yik in the final.

World No. 7 Chirag-Satwiksairaj, who played a huge part in India’s Thomas Cup success in May, are eager to go one step better in the individual event after losing to Marcus Ellis-Chris Langridge of England in the final at the 2018 Gold Coast edition.

A gold in the individual event will surely give them a boost ahead of the World Championships in Tokyo from Aug 21-28.

The others who will be looking to capture gold medals for India in the individual events are men’s singles duo Lakshya Sen, K. Srikanth and P.V. Sindhu (women’s singles).