India out of Thomas, Uber Cup

The Indian men's and women's badminton teams crashed out of the Thomas and Uber Cup finals after suffering identical 0-3 defeats to Indonesia and China respectively in the quarter-finals in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Wednesday.

India's top shuttlers Parupalli Kashyap and Saina Nehwal gave a scare to higher-ranked opponents Taufik Hidayat and Yihan Wang before eventually going down 12-21, 21-10, 17-21 and 21-14, 11-21, 18-21 respectively.

However, all other Indians suffered straight game defeats.

In the Thomas Cup quarter-finals, Kashyap was the first to take the court and the world No 33 shuttler came back strongly to win the second game 21-10 after losing the first 12-21.

In the decider, Kashyap was ahead 10-8 before Hidayat made it 10-10. But, from there on, Hidayat stamped his authority and the closest scoreline Kashyap could reach was 13-14 before the world No 5 Indonesian wrapped the game 21-17 and with it the match in 61 minutes.

The Indian doubles duo of Sanave Thomas and Akshay Dewalkar then lost 16-21, 17-21 to Markis Kido and Hendra Setiawan before Arvind Bhatt was outplayed 8-21, 10-21 by Simon Santoso in the third match.

In the Uber Cup, world No 6 Saina looked set for an upset victory in the first match after winning the first game 21-14 against Wang.

She produced some superb smashes and net winners against the world No 1 Chinese, but Wang came back strongly to win the second game 21-11.

The stage was set for a thrilling deciding game and Saina made her Chinese opponent to do the catch up job initially, going up 8-5.

But after that Wang tightened her game and dictated terms till the scoreline was tied 18-18.

It was anybody's game at that stage but the Chinese won three successive points to take the deciding game 21-18 and wrap the match in 56 minutes.

The Indian women's doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa then lost 8-21, 11-21 before Sayali Gokhale was outplayed by Xin Wang 10-21, 14-21 in just 27 minutes in the third match.