India's campaign at the Sudirman Cup ended as they lost 0-3 against the top-seeded China in the quarterfinals of the mixed team championship in Australia on Friday.
In the mixed doubles event, Ashwini Ponnappa and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy put up a gritty show to challenge World No. 2 Kai and Huang Yaqiong, but ultimately went down 16-21, 21-13, 21-16.
In the men's singles, K Srikanth lost 16-21, 17-21 to Olympic gold medallist Chen Long. The match lasted 48 minutes with India trailing 0-2 in the five-match rubber.
The men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj and Chirag Shetty then faced Fu Haifeng and Zhang Nan, losing 9-21, 11-21 in 29 minutes as China registered a 3-0 win over India.
The next two matches -- women's singles, which PV Sindhu was supposed to play, and women's doubles -- hence became inconsequential and were not played.
Interestingly, the last time India had qualified for the Sudirman Cup quarterfinals was in 2011, where they had also lost to China.
China, which lost only one of their 10 matches in the round-robin stage, will next face Japan in the semi-finals.