Singapore Open 2025: Satwik-Chirag bow out in semi-finals

The Indian badminton men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty exited the 2025 Singapore Open Super 750 semi-finals on Saturday.

The Indian duo lost to Malaysia’s Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik 21-19, 10-21, 18-21 in a little over an hour.

Satwik-Chirag started the match on a positive note, leading the first game backed by long rallies and solid defence. They claimed the first game 21-19.

The duo were making a comeback after battling fitness issues. Saturday’s semifinal was their third semi-final appearance of the season, having reached the last-four stage at both the Malaysia and India Open earlier this year.

The Malaysian pair, however, bounced back stronger and did not let Satwik-Chirag settle even for a bit. The world no 3 pair won the final game in similar fashion, attacking from the start.

“To come this far with the number of days we've trained and the week, months we've had both professionally and personally, I think to get back here and to play as a mid laner, I think we never really expected," said Chirag in the mixed zone after the match.

"So I think plenty of positives because you always see that as you go deeper into the tournament, you want to go and win the title. But I think when I look back it’s a really good start,” he added.

The former world no 1 Indian pair dropped out of the top-20 world rankings for the first time in six years and are now ranked 27th in the world, according to the BWF World Rankings last week.

“We didn't like that number 27. We heard about that. But it's because of a break we had. We didn't play many tournaments, but if you look back, whatever we played, we played almost the semifinals,” Satwik said.

For Satwik-Chirag, this was their third semifinal appearance of the season, having reached the last-four stage at both the Malaysia and India Open earlier this year.

The Malaysian pair will now face South Korea's SJ Seo and WH Kim in men’s doubles final.