Gold Coast (Australia), Apr 14 (IANS): India's Ashwini Ponnappa and Satwik Rankireddy will play for bronze after going down closely 22-20, 18-21, 16-21 to England's Marcus Ellis and Lauren Smith in their badminton mixed doubles semi-final at the 21st Commonwealth Games here on Saturday.

The Indian duo squandered a fine start, which saw them come back from a 6-11 deficit at the break to square things at 20-20 and pocket the opening game in 21 minutes.

The World No.29 English pair, however dominated with a 11-3 till the breather in the second game, but Ahwini and Stwik managed to pull things back to cut the deficit to 17-18.

From there on, Marcus and Lauren maintained their lead to 19-18 before gaining the two points in the 21 minute affair.

With both the teams squared at 1-1, the decider witnessed a neck-to-neck contest with the English pair getting a slender 11-9 lead at the break.

Coming back, the English duo extended their lead to 14-11 even as the Indians managed to reduce the deficit and trail 13-16.

Marcus and Lauren, however managed to keep their composure and comfortably clinched the 20-minute third game and the contest at the end.

The Indian pair will now take on the Malaysian duo of Peng Soon Chan and Liu Ying Goh in the bronze medal match, later on Saturday.

Soon Chan and Ying Goh lost 19-21, 17-21 in their semi-final match to English World No.10 husband-wife duo of of Chris and Gabrielle Adcock.