C’WEALTH GAMES SF – England stun India

A rematch of Delhi’s mixed team semi final saw India take on a young England side, but this time the reverse result came as England whitewashed the Indians and guaranteed an improvement on the bronze medal in Delhi.

By Michael Burke, Badzine Correspondent, live from Glasgow.  Photos: Yohan Nonotte for Badmintonphoto (live).

England raced into the lead as Chris and Gabby Adcock (pictured left) dominated their match, despite a run of 12 points in thirteen rallies for Dewalkar and Gutta to take the second game.

Despite the extended match, the Adcocks never looked under too much pressure and Gabby spoke after saying, “Obviously we’re very pleased to get the team off to a great start, it’s not always easy to play against a scratch pairing but we knew we just had to fight to the end.”

Chris continued, “We were in control, we just needed to stop the one area, Jwala’s serve is very strange on the international stage. We just had to refocus, but we dominated the whole game.”

Rajiv Ouseph (pictured right) followed up the impressive opening with an equally mature performance as he outwitted his Indian opponent with calm and steady play, as Kashyap Parupalli (pictured left) was unwilling to commit to the longer rallies.

“I’m thrilled to have won and it puts the team in a really strong position. The match was tough, long and hard rallies, so it was hard to keep the pace up.”

“I’m happy I came out on top, we’ve played before quite a few times and have a fairly even record. The rankings didn’t matter as anything can happen in a team match.”

Chris Adcock returned with Andy Ellis (pictured left), looking to take the clean sweep for England, but their early nerves saw Chopra and Dewalkar capitalise to take a quick lead.

The English pair regrouped towards the end of the first game and came out firing all cylinders for the next game. The final was a close affair with an 82 shot rally showing how hard the English were made to work, but the effort paid off.

Chris took the blame for the slow start, “In terms of performance that was pretty poor from me, they came out really strong. There was a lot of hard work, mainly from Andy that got us back in it.”

Ellis was quick to pass on the praise however, “Mr Reliable set us up perfectly, Raj just seems to up his level at any team competition and he really just made it work. How you finish a game shows a world class player, and Chris really showed that today how we came through.”

Chris finished, “We finished stronger and sharper, we had to draw on all our experience. The more and more we get ourselves into tight situations like that the better we’ll come out for it and it’ll stand us in good stead in the future.”

The full results for the semi final can be found here.