London: India's appeal against the result of a group B match between Japan and Chinese Taipei in the women's doubles badminton competition, which they alleged was not played in the right spirit and resulted in the elimination of the Indian pair, was turned down here on Wednesday.
Badminton Association Of India (BAI) president Akhilesh Das Gupta on Wednesday said that their formal protest was rejected because of lack of evidence.
"On behalf of BAI we had lodged a protest saying that the match between Japan and Chinese Taipei was also fixed and Japan deliberately lost that match just to have a better draw in the next round, resulting in India not getting a chance to qualify for the next round," Das Gupta said.
"But now, they have already rejected our protest. We are also shocked and surprised. A day before we had beaten Chinese Taipei and they have qualified and we were denied qualification because Japan lost deliberately. They said they could not find evidence to charge the players. On the basis of that they rejected the appeal," he added.
India had lodged a formal protest with the Games organisers to probe if the Japan-Chinese Taipei match was played in the right spirit yesterday, following the elimination of medal hopes Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa.
"We have formally lodged a complaint asking the organising committee to look at the Japan and Chinese Taipei match to see whether that match was played in the spirit of the sport, which I don't think was the case, and we are awaiting the outcome of that," Gopichand said.
On Tuesday night, Jwala and Ashwini missed out on a quarter-final berth by a difference of just one point, even though they beat Shinta Mulia Sari and Lei Yao of Singapore 21-16 21-15 in their last group B match, after tying with Japan and Taipei on the number of wins.
Prior to India's final group game last night, the World number five Japanese pair of Mizuki Fujii and Reika Kakiiwa had shockingly lost to Chinese Taipei's Cheng Wen Hsing and Chien Yu Chin, ranked 10th, 19-21 11-21.
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