BWF World C'ships: Treesa-Gayatri confirm women's doubles medal for India after 15 years

New Delhi: Indian women’s doubles pair Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand secured a stunning win over fourth seeded Jia Yi Fan and Zhang Shu Xian at the BWF World Championships 2026 on Friday to guarantee themselves a medal.

Trailing after the first game, they fought back to defeat four-time world champion Jia and her new partner Zhang 16-21, 21-15, 21-13 in the quarter-final.

The result marks India’s first women’s doubles medal at the World Championships in 15 years. Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa’s historic bronze in 2011 was India's last medal in the discipline.

It also continues India’s unbroken streak of winning at least one medal at every edition of the championships since Jwala-Ashwini's breakthrough.

Treesa-Gayatri's Historic Win

World No. 39, Treesa-Gayatri came into the match as the underdog against a world No. 4 Chinese pair, having lost their last three encounters against them.

The Chinese pair started the match as the favourites, troubled the Indian pair with their rally game, forcing them to run all over the court to gain a 6-0 early lead.

Both Indian players also made a couple of unforced errors on their returns and went further behind, trailing 2-9.

But then the Indians tweaked their gameplay and tried to continously switch their positions from back to front and vice versa to confuse the Chinese shuttlers.

This helped them to win five consecutive points for the Indian pair to close down their deficit to just one point.

After the mid-game break, Treesa displayed some beautiful smashes and kept the game tightly poised. Gayatri also helped her partner with precise interceptions on the net to find the winners.

Despite some good shots, the two weren't really able to close the gap, but the crowd tried to keep their morale high with different chants.

However, the Chinese maintained the lead throughout and took the game with a beautiful drop shot, silencing the Indian crowd for the time being.

The second game started similarly with a Chinese pair taking an early lead at 5-1 after multiple unforced errors from the Indians.

But they once again bounced back with some good net shots, closed the deficit and pulled back the game at 7-8. They continued the fight with some brilliant low smashes and entered the second mid-game with a 11-10 lead

After the mid-game break, the Indian pair won a couple of points with Gayatri pressing high up to the net to find winners, extending their lead to 13-10.

The Chinese pair tried to stretch the game and use the width of the court, pushing the Indians to the back court with high lifts and then dropping near the net.

The Chinese attempted a lot of flat drives, but Treesa showed some good defence on the back and kept a good lead to force a decider.

In the third game, the Indian pair started much better than the previous games, reducing their errors and speeding up their court coverage.

Under the pressure from the home crowd, Chinese shuttlers also made a lot of unforced errors, giving Indians a very good lead at 9-4.

At the final change of ends, India had a big advantage with an 11-5 lead.

A lot of errors crept in from the Chinese on the net as the Treesa-Gayatri lead 19-9 at one point.

With a historic win just corners away, the Indian pair made a couple of errors under pressure, but eventually they bagged a big win as Jia's return landed outside the side court on the third match point.