Hong Kong Open 2023: Treesa Jolly-Gayatri Gopichand lose in the ...

India's campaign at the Hong Kong Open 2023 badminton tournament ended early with Gayatri Gopichand-Treesa Jolly and Ashwini Ponnappa-Tanisha Crasto losing their respective women’s doubles round of 16 matches on Thursday.

Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly, 18th in the badminton rankings, were up against Indonesia's Apriyani Rahayu and Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti, currently the world No. 8 women's doubles pair. The Indian duo lost the match 8-21, 14-21 in 36 minutes at the Hong Kong Coliseum.

Apriyani Rahayu and Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti, who won a silver medal at the world championships earlier this year, made it very hard for the Indian duo to score any points from the start and pocketed the second game comfortably.

The Indian badminton pair did marginally better in the second game, but not enough to trouble the Indonesians.

Ashwini Ponnappa and Tanisha Crasto, meanwhile, went down against two-time world champions Mayu Matsumoto and Wakana Nagahara of Japan by an 18-21, 7-21 margin. The world No. 7 Japanese duo outplayed the Indian pair, ranked 43 places below them in the rankings, in a 38-minute affair.

Ashwini Ponnappa-Tanisha Crasto and Gayatri Gopichand-Treesa Jolly were the only Indian shuttlers competing in the round of 16 stage of the Hong Kong Open 2023 - a BWF World Tour Super 500 event. None of the other Indian badminton players involved made it past the opening round of the main draw.

At last week’s China Open BWF World Tour Super 1000 tournament, the Indian challenge had ended in the first round.

Results at the Hong Kong Open 2023 will also count towards qualifying rankings for the Paris 2024 Olympics.