The Indian challenge at the All England Open Badminton championship came to a tame end with all the three Indian men bowing out in the second round at Birmingham.
National champion Chetan Anand was shown the door by seventh seed Kenneth Jonassen of Denmark, losing 4-15, 5-15, while Nikhil Kanetkar went down to ninth seed Wei Ng of Hong Kong 7-15, 2-15 late Wednesday night.
Top rated Indian Abhinn Shyam Gupta was the only player who put up a brief fight in the second round encounter but eventually lost to third seed Chen Hong of China 8-15, 5-15.
Earlier, national women's champion Aparna Popat bowed out in the first round itself, losing to Yao Jie of The Netherlands 7-11, 9-11.
In the first round, Anand defeated Tooru Matsumoto of Japan 15-10, 13-15, 15-13; Kanetkar got the better of Chen Yu-Hsiu of Chinese Taipei 15-2, 13-15, 15-13 while Gupta had little problems in packing off Jan Frohlieh of the Czech Republic 15-4, 15-8.
