Treesa Jolly, Gayatri Gopichand beat Australia pair to clinch bronze in women’s doubles badminton at CWG 2022

The Indian pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand clinched a bronze medal in the badminton women’s singles event at the Commonwealth Games on Sunday.

The duo defeated Australia’s Chen Hsuan-Yu Wendy and Gronya Somerville 21-15, 21-19 in straight games to clinch their maiden doubles medal at the Games. Overall, this is their second CWG medal after they secured a silver earlier in the same edition in the mixed team event.

The pair of Treesa and Gopichand cruised to a 21-15 win in the first game and had an emphatic start to the second, racing away to a 11-5 lead at the break. However, Chen and Somerville pulled back with some brilliant bits of net play, reducing the gap to only a point at 16-15. Furthermore, the Australian pair gained a 19-18 lead over Treesa and Gayatri too, but the young Indian duo held its nerves to make a brilliant comeback.

Earlier, the Indian duo had faced a 13-21, 16-21 defeat to Malaysia’s Tan Koong Le Pearly and Thinaah Muralitharan in the semi-final to bow out of contention for gold medal.

This was India’s second medal of the day in badminton after Kidambi Srikanth had also clinched a bronze. On Monday, India will have an action-packed day in badminton with PV Sindhu, Lakshya Sen, and the men’s doubles duo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty playing for a top podium finish at the Commonwealth Games.

Treesa and Gopichand’s bronze was India’s 53rd medal at the Games. India currently stand at fifth spot in the CWG 2022 tally.