The young Indian women’s team faced a quarterfinal exit against hosts China at the 2026 Badminton Asia Team Championships in Qingdao on Friday.
The defending champion faced a 0-3 defeat to the tough Chinese team after losing the first three matches of the tie, finishing the tournament without a medal.
China was always expected to be a tough opponent for India, having multiple top-ranked players in the lineup incuding world no. 10 Gao Fang Jie in singles.
Gao started the match for China with a thrashing 21-9, 21-9 win over the 17-year-old Tanvi Sharma, giving the home team a very strong start to the tie.
Following that, the world no.4 pairing of Jia Yi Fan and Zhang Shu Xian edged past the top-ranked Indian duo of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, 24-22, 21-17.
The young indian pair fought bravely against such a higher-ranked pair to come back from a 7-point deficit to force extra points in the opening game.
However, they couldn’t finish the game, losing closely 22-24, and then shifted the momentum back to the Chinese, who closed out the match in straight games.
In the third match, Rakshitha Sree started positively, winning the opening game against Wen Jing Xu, but then conceded the next two and lost the match, 21-14, 15-21, 17-21.
