The Indian challenge at the All England [ Images ] 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 [ Images ] 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 [ Images ] 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.