Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand Pullela fall to Korea’s Baek Na Ha and Lee So Hee at All England semis

The Indian pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand Pullela fell to Korea’s Baek Na Ha and Lee So Hee at the All England semifinal on Saturday.
The pair were defeated 21-10, 21-10 in straight games as their attacking nous crumbled against the Koreans’  impenetrable defence with the first game lasting 20 minutes, followed 26 min-long second game.
The Koreans turned into a retrieving machine as they defended seamlessly and extended the rallies with their high tosses and lifts to not allow the Indians to play their short flat rally game. The result was that Gayatri and Treesa failed to make a good start, like they did in this week, falling behind 0-4 early on.
Lee and Baek frustrated the Indian with longer rallies, waiting patiently for their opponents to make errors. It worked perfectly as the Koreans grabbed a 11-5 lead.
Briefly the Indians made it 9-13 but it was a one-way traffic from 14-10, with the Koreans drawing the first blood with seven straight points, including the last which went long from Gayatri.
The Koreans didn’t kill the shots at the nets and kept playing more high lifts with the Indians sticking with their smashes from the back court.
Gayatri and Treesa couldn’t change their tactics and went wide and long too many times as Lee and Baek zoomed to a massive 11-2 lead at the mid-game interval of the second game.
Gayatri had her moment of brilliance, when she mixed body shots with a drop to grab a point to move to 5-11 after resumption, but such instances were too few.
The Indians managed just five more points before Treesa hit the net to hand 10 match points to the Koreans, who sealed their place in the final after another long rally.
On Friday, the World number 17 pair had defeated Li Wen Mei and Liu Xuan Xuan 21-14, 18-21, 21-12 in the quarterfinals. Before that, they had staged an upset, taking down the former world number one pair of Yuki Fukushima and Sayaka Hirota 21-14, 24-22 in a second round contest.
In the first round, they had stunned Thailand’s, Jongkolphan Kitiiharakul and Rawinda Prajongai.
(With agency inputs)