"VAN" (Hemant Kumar Sharma - Hangzhou, China - 01.10.2023) :: Gold Medal match for Badminton Team event was already fixed for Sunday here at Hangzhou China in Asian Games 2023. By evening 1700 hrs we were entered in the stadium and found fully packed with the Chinese spectators. Whole home crowd were shouting in favour of Chinese players and Indian players were looking someone to favour him. At last, they take the lead from their own teammates and Indian Bench players of Badminton and some other Indian contingent members who were sitting in the VIP stands in the stadium made the favour. Indian benched players raising the slogans “BHARAT MATA KI JAI”, “JEETEGA BHAI JEETEGA – INDIA JEETEGA” and from VIP Stands, Indian ex-shooter Gagan Narang was also raising his hands with some slogans. Finally Indian on-court players came back in positive-way and made this day historic in the history of Badminton; where China smashed the Gold against Indian players while India received Silver Medal of Asian Games 2023 at Hangzhou, China.

Indian shuttler Lakshay Sen take the charge in first match against world number 6 Chinese Player SHI Yu Qi. 14th ranked Lakshya won the first game during last moments against the whole Chinese supporters. Lakshya won the match against Qi by 22-20, 14-21, 21-18 in marathon 84 minutes.

In the second match of the game Indian shuttlers RANKIREDDY Satwik Sairaj and SHETTY Chirag Chandrashekhar took the charge against Chinese duos LIANG Weikeng and WANG Chang. They played 55 minutes during the game and smashed the Chinese on their home court in two sets directly by 21-15, 21-18. After won the match both Indian players were dancing on the court in front of more than 10,000 supporters in the stadium. Chirag Shetty told to VAN International News Agency’s senior sports journalist Hemant Kumar Sharma that this is the hobby of my colleague Satwik and we enjoyed very much on the court against this fully packed stadium. Chirag also told to VAN International News Agency in the response of a question that we were only listening our colleague’s voice who were shouting for us in this crowd. We were not listening anything whatever in favour of others.

In the third match of the game it was a new starting for the Chinese Team because LI Shi Feng beat Indian shuttler KIDAMBI Srikanth Nammalwar by 24-22, 21-9. World Number 8th seeded Li was on the top in the game since starting and won the one-sided match against world number 21 Indian shuttler Srikanth in 63 minutes.

It was not over yet for Chinese Team and their second men’s double pair were on the court after this come-back by Li.

Forth game was completed in only 44 minutes and this was the came-back for Chinese team. Chinese players played very-well in match-4 and won the match against Indian players KAPILA Dhruv and KRISHNA PRASAD Sai Pratheek by 21-6, 21-15. Chinese LIU Yuchen and OU Xuanyi won the one-sided game – 1 against Indian duos by 21-6. In the second game of the match they fought but at the end it was the level between both teams by 2-2 in the Gold Medal Match of Men’s Team Badminton at Hangzhou, China Asian Games 2023.

Now, it was the last Match of the game for Gold Medal and it was decided as well for the podium finish. World No 53 Indian MANJUNATH Mithun was ready to face world number 20 Chinese WENG Hongyang. Ultimately, in 36 minutes of the first Game of 5th Match won by Chinese shuttler by 21-12. 53rd seeded Manjunath lost the second game of 5th match easily against host’s 20th seeded Weng by 21-4 and lost the historical gold medal also for Team India.

China won the gold finally in Men’s Badminton Team Event while India received Silver in the event. Bronze goes to Japan & Korea. Indian player Manjunath lost his match against opponent in an hour against huge local crowd.