Singapore: India's leading men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty was left to carry Indian hopes after former world champion PV Sindhu suffered an early exit in the Singapore Open badminton tournament here on Thursday. The duo reached the quarterfinals with a come-from-behind win against their Indonesian opponents.

Satwik and Chirag rallied to beat seventh-seeded Sabar Karyaman Gutama and Moh Reza Pahlevi Isfahani 19-21 21-16 21-19 in a gruelling contest that lasted one hour and 14 minutes. They will face the second-seeded Malaysian team of Goh Sze Fei and Nur Izzuddin in the next round.

The Indian pair had reached the semifinals of the Malaysian Open recently.

But double Olympic medalist PV Sindhu could not keep her winning momentum and went down to world No 5 Chen Yufei of China 9-21, 21-18, 16-21 in 65 minutes in the second round.

Sindhu, now world No 17, showed glimpses of her old form to lead 19-12 in the second game before closing it out 21-18. But she struggled in the third game to hand Chen the match. It was Sindhu's seventh loss to Chen in 13 meetings.

There was disappointment for India in the men's singles competition as H S Prannoy bowed out following a 16-21 14-21 loss to Frenchman Christo Popov in the pre-quarterfinals. Lakshya Sen had earlier withdrawn from the tournament following a back injury.

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