India’s campaign at the Australian Open Grand Prix Gold badminton tournament ended on Thursday after R.M.V. Gurusaidutt and Anand Pawar lost their respective third round matches of the men’s singles event here.
Eleventh seeded Gurusaidutt gave a tough fight to world number one Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia before going down 10-21 21-18 15-21 in a match that lasted a little less than an hour.
Pawar, seeded 14th, lost to fourth seed Wei Feng Chong of Malaysia 19-21 15-21 in just 41 minutes.
The other Indians in both the men’s and women’s categories had already crashed out of the tournament in earlier rounds.
Gurusaidutt was hardly a match to the world number one shuttler in the opener, as the Indian was playing the catching up game.
But in the second game, Gurusaidutt got his act together to pose a huge challenge to Chong Wei. It was a neck-and-neck battle till 15-15 before the 23-year-old Indian opened up a 18-15 lead. He then simply surged ahead to seal the game in his favour.
In the decider, even though he started off well to make it 7-7, Gurusaidutt lost the plot to go down tamely in the end.
Meanwhile, Pawar fought hard in the first game. From 11-17 down at one stage, he reduced the margin but finally lost 19-21.
In the next game, Pawar failed to live up to the promise, even as Wei Feng Chong managed to maintain the lead before wrapping up the match.
