Ashwini Ponnappa was pulled off from the regular partner Sikki Reddy and was asked to play with P.V. Sindhu in the Asian Games women’s team quarterfinal against Japan here on Monday.
But there were no long faces, for it was chief coach Gopi Chand who split the two here.
“When you decide to part ways, it’s always nasty in the end. It’s kind of easier when the coach makes the decisions,” said the 28-year-old Ponnappa after the match.
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“In the last two years, I’ve had three partners in mixed doubles: Nandagopal for two tourneys, Sumeeth Reddy for five and now Satwik (Rankireddy). If they were my decisions, it wouldn’t have been easy for me.
“But now, there are no emotions attached to the partners, it depends on what the coach says.”
Ponnappa said she believed she and Sindhu could pull off a win against Olympic women’s doubles champions Misaki Matsutomo and Ayaka Takahashi today.
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“I did believe that we could have done that. Sindhu is really strong, she has got a hard smash but they were extremely smart with their attack, they had a lot of angles and variations with their smashes. And unfortunately, Sindhu doesn’t play doubles.”
Ponnappa felt that as a nation, India had a long way to go in doubles.