Glasgow: England will face Malaysia in the badminton mixed team event final on Monday after a hard-fought 3-0 win over India in the semifinals at the Emirates Arena on Sunday evening.
Adcock and wife Gabby laid the platform for victory as they overcame Akshay Dewalkar and Jwala Gutta 2-1. The Adcock pairing were in control leading 21-16, 15-8 but they lost 12 of the next 13 points to present Akshay Dewalkar and Jwala Gutta a way back into the match. However they regained their composure to close out the final game 21-11.
Rajiv Ouseph then overcame world number 22 Kashyap Parupalli of India 21-16 21-19 in the men’s singles to put England ahead 2-0.
Adcock and Andy Ellis completed the job with a 2-1 men’s doubles win over Dewalkar and Pranaav Chopra, but only after coming from behind in another energy-sapping encounter.
“We’re still to drop a rubber on the way to the final,” pointed out Chris Adcock. “That’s an amazing achievement.
“In terms of performance I was pretty poor. They made us work pretty hard for that. There was a lot of hard work, mainly from Andy because I was just standing at the net most of the time.”
“I’ll be blunt, I was tired,” added Ellis. “I was blowing. The Indian guys were exceptional. It’s just relief.
“Chris spoke about how he started, but what shows a real world-class player, which Chris is, is how you finish a game. If you look at the last five or six rallies, Chris stepped up. That’s what makes world-class players.”
“Malaysia has been pushed quite a lot in this tournament so far, they are probably not as strong as they have been previously. Why can’t we push them all the way?”
“The final will be a really nice occasion and we want to set a few things straight from the last time we played against them.”
