Kidambi Srikanth loses to Lin Dan after brave fight

In the second game, Srikanth put up a much improved and patient show to bring plenty of errors from the Chinese's racket.

Antonio Conte believes Chelsea can emulate his former club Juventus as he looks to make them title contenders again, but warned that success will take time. Chelsea won the Premier League in 2015 but slumped to a 10th place finish last season, with coach Jose Mourinho replaced by Guus Hiddink in December following an astonishing decline. Conte arrived at Stamford Bridge this summer after leading Italy to the quarter-finals of the European Championship, and thinks his previous experience with Juventus has prepared him to lead Chelsea's revival. "Juventus hadn't won the title for many, many years and at the start it did not appear easy," Conte told Chelsea magazine. "Confidence was low and the players didn't trust themselves. "It's important to work in that situation and I remember we worked very hard." Conte took over at Juve in May 2011, replacing Luigi Delneri who finished seventh the season before. He guided the 'Old Lady' of Italian football to the Serie A title in his first season at the club and won two further Scudetti before resigning in 2014. "We can see a bit of the same situation now, no?" Conte added. "After a bad season, 10th place was no good for the players, confidence was low and the fans weren't happy with this situation. "But I know only one word that we must follow and that is to work, and to work very hard. If we stay together, in bad and in good situations, very, very soon we will try to go back to playing for the title." Conte's reign at Stamford Bridge began with a 2-1 victory over West Ham United on Monday evening, and they continue their campaign at Watford on Saturday. "It's not easy, but we must try and we must find the right motivation, the right spirit to fight."

Srikanth started poorly in the first game. (Source: AP)

Kidambi Srikanth put a brave fight to push World No 3 Lin Dan all the way to the deciding game but gave away silly points at the death to lose in the quarterfinals. Srikanth and Dan contested the match for over an hour with the final game stretching to 30 minutes before the Chinese player won 21-6, 11-21, 21-18 to seal a place in the semi-finals.

The win keeps Lin Dan in hopes of picking up a third straight gold medal in the men’s singles event at the Olympics having done so already in Beijing and London.

Srikanth started poorly in the first game affected by unforced errors and nerves to make uncharacteristic mistakes thus allowing Lin Dan to win 11 points in a row.

The first game was over in no time with a Srikanth angled smash hitting the tramlines.

In the second game, Srikanth put up a much improved and patient show to bring plenty of errors from the Chinese’s racket. The epitome of it was Srikanth’s lovely drop shot at 7-5 by controlling the racket head to flick the shuttle and send it near the net.

Lin Dan continued to make errors at the net and Srikanth made most of his trusty smashes across the Chinese player to bring up the point for an equaliser. And Srikanth got the job done on the second attempt with an angled shot.

The third set went both ways with Srikanth and Lin Dan both making their share of mistakes but the Indian got a little impatient at the end to go for rushed shots – most notably at 17-19 to bring up a match point.

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Srikanth saved one but couldn’t save the next as Lin Dan went into Srikanth’s body and the Indian couldn’t send it back.