By Milly McEvoy in Birmingham 

Chester’s Jenny Mairs suffered a cruel case of deja vu as she and partner Greg exited the YONEX All England Open Badminton Championships in the first round. 

The Mairs faced off against compatriots Lauren Smith and Marcus Ellis in a tense all-English battle in the mixed doubles, losing 19-21 21-16 22-20. 

Their three-game defeat followed another deciding game loss at last year’s tournament to see them again miss out on a spot in the second round. 

“I think after last year we wanted to come back and get revenge for a close third set loss and we’ve not quite been able to do that,” she said. 

“We always have that feeling of being confident. I think we've got to at this kind of level of badminton.  

“If you go on court thinking you're going to lose, you are going to lose. So we obviously went in with high expectations of ourselves as we always do.  

“We knew it was going to be a close match and it was.” 

The Mairs, who married last year, took the first set having opened up an early advantage but were soon pegged back in the second. 

The match moved to a deciding game with the largely English crowd picking a side and cheering on their favourites. 

They were rewarded with a close final set with the Mairs forcing Ellis and Smith to a second match point before the higher-ranked pair took it . 

Ellis and Smith advance to the second round to face seed-topplers Dejan Ferdinansyah and Gloria Emmanuelle Widjaja and leave the Mairs devastated. 

She added: “The process for the game was to just take every point as it comes.  

“Last year we got a bit focussed on the end result and we saw the finish line.  

“I think today we did that well, we didn’t see the finish line, we took breaks when we needed to.  

“But it was a challenge at 19-19 which didn’t quite go our way which is frustrating. 

“We’re devastated not to be in that second round, it’s been a huge goal of ours to reach the second round either at this level but especially at the All England so we are pretty gutted.” 

Be part of All The Action at the All England. Tickets are still available at allenglandbadminton.com. Can’t be in Birmingham this week? You can still see badminton's most prestigious tournament play out on BBC Sport and TNT Sports. Don’t miss a minute!