India's number 1 men's duo Satwik/Chirag have decided to skip the Indonesia Masters to focus on Thomas Cup title.
India’s No. 1 men’s doubles duo, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty have decided to skip the next tour of the BWF World Tour, Indonesia Masters to shift their focus to the Thomas Cup title. The duo have had a rough start to the year after making two runner-up finishes at two consecutive events at the BWF World Tour. Satwik/Chirag failed to win both the Malaysian Open and the India Open.
They are now eager to take this form forward in the team events starting with the Asian Team Championships in Malaysia on February 13. The event will be a trailer before the big show in April-May and help India fine-tune their strategies going into the biggest team event this year, The Thomas Cup.
Read more: Bitter news for Satwik/Chirag after the duo failed to qualify for BWF World Tour Finals
India is the defending champion of the Thomas Cup and will look to defend the title successfully later this year. “We want to do well at the Asian Team Championships, but our main aim is to do well at the Thomas Cup, we are the defending champions there. We will want to be on the podium,” said Chirag after losing the India Open final on Sunday.
“We always do well at the team championship, especially at the men’s team championship. We also made it to the final of the Asian Games team event for the first time last year and were also leading 2-0 at one stage in the final against China but unfortunately lost that in the end,” he added.
The next big tournament for Satwik and Chirag is the Asian Team Championships as they are not playing any more tournaments this month, including this week’s Indonesia Masters, to avoid injuries and want to focus on playing only major tournaments in a very important year having two big events, the Thomas Cup and the Olympics.
“We are not playing in Indonesia next week, now we will go straight to the Asian Team Championship and then focus on All England Open and the French Open. We want to play less tournaments this year and not to get injured. So, we just want to pick and choose tournaments and want to reach the finals of whatever tournaments we play this year,” Satwik seconded Chirag.
Read more: India Open 2024: Satwik/Chirag storm into second successive final on the BWF World Tour
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