Uber Cup: Freak injury hurts the Indian camp after China hammering

The young Indian women's badminton team was over-powered by the Chinese shuttlers in the final group-tie of Uber Cup 2024 in Chengdu, China on Tuesday.

The dominating 5-0 victory came despite the valiant efforts of Isharani Baruah and Tanvi Sharma.

To make matters worse, Anmol Kharb suffered a heartbreaking ankle-injury during her match against Han Yue.

A freak injury

The young shuttler started third-match of the tie well against the world no.7, Han Yue, with her trademark drop shots but Han was equal to the task, using beautiful overhead shots to catch Anmol off-guard.

The Indian got flustered with this game-play from the Chinese shuttler and made a several unforced errors enroute to dropping the first game 9-21.

It was in the second game that Anmol picked up the ankle-injury when retrieving a shuttle using a slide which caused a full 90-degree twist.

Sadly, she had to concede the match. 

A valiant effort

Meanwhile, the tie started with the match between Isharani Baruah and the current Olympic champion, Chen Yufei.

Yufei took a comfortable straight game (12-21,10-21) victory over the young Indian despite of a good start where she was up by 6-3 in the first game.

In the women's doubles, Priya Devi and Shruti Mishra lost (13-21, 12-21) to world no.1 piaring of Chen Qien Chen and Jia Yifan, while Ritika Thaker and Simran Singh suffered a straight-game (9-21, 10-21) defeat to world no. 3, Liu Sheng Shu and Tan Ning.

In the final match of the day, 15-year old Tanvi Sharma made her Uber Cup debut against Asian champion and world no.8, Wang Zhi Yi.

A visibly anxious Tanvi started badly, making a slew of errors and eventually dropping the first game 7-21.

In the second game, she controlled her nerves and played a brilliant game, packed with deceptive shots.

But in the final moments after 14-15, Tanvi had few very close misses on the sidelines and then Wang grabbed this opportunity to take the final game 21-16, and completed the clean sweep in the tie over India.

India, despite of losing the game, has secured their place in the quarterfinals after two wins against Canada and Singapore earlier in the tournament.

Their Quarter-final opponent will be decided after a draw ceremony on Wednesday where they will be up against any one of the top ranked team in other three groups.