India’s men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty beat two-time Olympic medallists Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik of Malaysia in the semi-finals of the China Masters 2025 badminton on Saturday.
The Asian Games champions, seeded eighth in the BWF Super 750 tournament, took 41 minutes to overcome the second-seeded Malaysian pair 21-17, 21-14 and make their second successive final on the 2025 BWF World Tour season.
It was a cagey start at 7-7 before Soh Wooi Yik and Aaron Chia took a 10-7 lead at the Shenzhen Arena.
The Indian badminton players, though, clawed back with three straight points to level at 10-all, only for a service error from Chirag to hand the Malaysians a slender lead at the mid-game break.
From there, the Indians seized control with tight gameplay at the net. Winning 11 of the next 17 points, Satwik and Chirag pulled clear to pocket the opening game with ease.
Satwik and Chirag then carried their momentum into the second game, racing to an 8-2 lead and holding an 11-6 cushion at the interval.
The rest of the contest proved to be a one-way traffic, with Satwik and Chirag’s smashes proving decisive against Soh Wooi Yik and Aaron Chia, who made it easier for the Indians with a few unforced errors.
This was only the Indian duo’s fifth win in 16 meetings against Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik, who had knocked them out in the quarter-finals of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
However, the Indians have now beaten the Malaysian heavyweights twice in succession, including a straight-game win in the quarter-finals of the BWF World Championships last month.
In the final, the Indian pair will take on the winners of the clash between top seeds Kim Won Ho and Seo Seung Jae of the Republic of Korea and Indonesia’s Fajar Alfian and Muhammad Shohibul Fikri.
This will be Satwik-Chirag’s second appearance in the final of the China Masters having also finished as runners-up in the 2023 edition of the tournament.
On Friday, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty defeated China’s Ren Xiangyu and Hao Nan Xie 21-14, 21-14 to book their place in the seventh semi-final of the year.
The Indian badminton duo, still in search of their first title this season, had reached their maiden final of 2025 only last week at the Hong Kong Open, where they fell to Olympic silver medallists Liang Wei Keng and Wang Chang of China.
Earlier, they had also secured their second World Championships bronze medal in Paris.