Adcocks aim to put Olympic opening defeat behind them

Adcock and wife gabby blew a match point as they were beaten 21-13, 20-22, 15-21 by Lost Chen and Ma Jin of China in the mixed doubles.

The couple face Joachim Fischer Nielsen and Christinna Pedersen of Denmark in their next match knowing nothing but a win will do.

“We obviously played well but we know we can beat that pair. Having a point to win it and then falling just short is really difficult,” he said.

“They played really well when it got tight. We had our chance but we have to be really proud of how we played and being in a group situation means we can still progress. If we keep playing well, we’ve definitely got a great chance.

“We’re really disappointed at the minute but we’ve got two more games to focus on. We started really well. We came out and we were on everything – really quick, on top of them and we could sense they didn’t know how to handle us.

“We sensed that all the way through once we got our plan right but whoever got control of the first bit of the rally seemed to take it. They did that a few more in the third than what we did.

“We absolutely didn’t dwell on the match point. The three points we lost at the end of the second we played exactly the same as how we did the whole three sets.

“At the start of the third, she hit two serves which net-corded and were very difficult to control. We did get back into it after the start of the third but unfortunately we could close the gap. We got within two or three but we just couldn’t get there.”