The Indian team finally qualified in the knockout stage of the Sudirman Cup mixed team championship. They would be facing China in the quarterfinals who have been 10-time champions.
Despite Indonesia defeating Denmark 3-2 in the last group 1D match. This will be the second time that India has reached the knockout stage, in the 2011 edition quarterfinals India had lost to china 1-3.
India couldn’t cross the group stage in the last two editions.
The ninth seeded India survived for a quarterfinal spot after shocking fifth seeded Indonesia 4-1 in a thrilling match on Tuesday.
In the ‘Group of death’, all the three teams India, Denmark and Indonesia won one of the two matches that they played but the first two teams qualified, riding on their match scores, i.e the number of matches won and lost in the league.
Denmark (6-4) topped the group, followed by India (5-5) and Indonesia (4-6) after the completion of the league stage.
India completed the league stage on Tuesday, but everyone was restless with Indonesia and Denmark’s match.
The day bombed like a thriller as the Indonesian world No. 8 pair of Praveen Jordan and Debby Susanto beat London Olympics bronze-medallist combo of Joachim Fischer Nielsen and Christinna Pedersen 21-12, 21-13 in the mixed doubles competition.
The men’s singles was an shock as Olympic bronze medallist Viktor Axelsen suffered a 21-13, 17-21, 14-21 loss to Anthony Sinisuka Gingting, giving Indonesia a 2-0 lead.
Former Olympic silver-medallists Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen then brought Denmark back in the contest with a thrilling 16-21, 24-22, 23-21 win over world No. 1 Marcus Fernaldi Gideon and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo.
But Fitriani Fitriani sealed the match for Indonesia with a hard-fought 22-24, 21-15, 21-14 win over Mia Blichfeldt in a women’s singles match that lasted an hour and 16 minutes.
Then Olympic silver-medallists Kamilla Rytter Juhl and Christinna Pedersen then fought out a 21-18, 13-21, 21-13 win over Greysia Polii and Apriyani Rahayu to reduce the margin of win to 2-3, which led to the entry of India in the knockout stage.
China is one of the tough competitors. They seem to have the upper hand in the game as they have lost just once out of the 10 matches in the group stage against Hong Kong and Thailand.
Also China has strong players like Lin Dan and Chen Long Sun Yu and Chen Yufei who will try to bring down India.
