Ben Lane and Sean Vendy reached the men’s doubles semi-finals at the Hylo Open on a pleasing week for English stars in Germany.
The experienced pair breezed into the last four where they were finally beaten by Chinese Taipei’s Lee Jhe-Huei and Yang Po-Hsuan.
The English duo improved as the match wore on, going down 21-17 in the second set after losing the first 21-9.
Prior to Saturday’s match, they had seen off Chinese Taipei pair Ye Hong Wei and Su Ching Heng, 21-18, 21-16 in the round of 32, France’s Julien Maio and William Villeger 21-14, 25-23 and India’s newly-crowned Commonwealth champion Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty 21-17 21-14 in the last eight.
Lane and Vendy were 2-1 down in their head-to-head record against Rankireddy and Shetty before the match, losing both the final in Birmingham and in the group stage at the Olympics in Tokyo.
Well done, boys! https://t.co/gpV6AJ8ndd
— Badminton England (@BadmintonEnglnd) November 4, 2022
But they levelled the scores in style with an impressive quarter-final performance in Saarbrucken.
Rory Easton and Zach Russ were also in men’s doubles action and reached the round of 16 stage after a gutsy 21-18, 21-19 triumph over Ireland’s Joshua Magee and Paul Reynolds.
But they were undone by Rankireddy and Shetty 22-24, 21-15, 21-11 in a thriller and missed the chance for a quarter-final showdown with countrymen Lane and Vendy.
Meanwhile, in the mixed doubles, Gregory Mairs and Jenny Moore made it to the quarter-final stage.
They beat highly-rated Malaysian pair Goh Soon Huat and Lai Shevon Jemie – often ranked inside the world’s top ten – 17-21, 21-10, 21-17 before coming unstuck 23-21, 21-14 against Thom Gicquel and Delphine Delrue of France in another tense battle.
The final pair taking to the court in Saarbrucken were Callum Hemming and Jessica Pugh, who were knocked out of the round of 32 stage in the mixed doubles after a 21-16, 21-9 defeat to the Netherlands’ Robin Tabeling and Selena Piek, who also beat them in the first round of the French Open last week.
