It’s a big National Sports Day for India, and badminton aces are keen on forging ahead after three stunning upsets on Thursday. Late night in Paris, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty came back from a set down to score a proper victory against Chinese Liang Weikeng and Wang Chan.
Though they have beaten the Chinese earlier – twice actually Asian Games team event and Korea semis – the head to head was 2-6 in favour of the Olympic silver medallists past few years. Far too cunning and adept at court craft, Weikeng and Chan typically would trouble the Indians on flat exchanges, change of pace, net control by Wang and sudden acceleration by Weikeng. In fact the Indian’s relative slump had been triggered by the Chinese – the 2023 China Masters and early 2024 Malaysia Open had sowed doubts in Indian minds about finishing, losing both finals to the Chinese.
At China, the Indians got to 19-18 in the decider, after being 19-10 down but couldn’t nail the finish. At Malaysia they frittered a 10-3 lead in the decider. The Chinese had a 4 match unbeaten run since 2023, in fact. And it got finally snapped.
“It was a very very good game,” Shetty told the BWF after the World Championships win in pre quarters. “It didn’t start off that well. Missed quite a few sitters. Shuttles were stopping a bit because of drift and a lot of midcourt smashes went to the net. Even for them. Because shuttle was quite difficult to adjust. But the way we played. In those crucial stages…. when we played Liang-Wang we’ve never really been able to get through. Although we won against them couple times, when it used to be crucial third game, it was close – either leading or down, they used to capitalise on it. This time we kept our calm. We knew we had to keep it simple – Served well. Catch it. We played really well in the first four strokes,” he explained.
Satwik reiterated that they were not at Paris with huge expectations, but the fight had steeped into every point, the resilience more stout.
“Feels really great. Played well. As I said yesterday we want that fire we want to go all out. If we lose also doesn’t matter. We wanted to play and see where we stand. That’s what we kept fighting every point, every point. In the same situation we used to lose in the third game. Down one or two points when they were more favourites than us. But today we stuck to the plan and kept getting one point, one point,” he told the BWF.
But the stage had been set by the mixed pair, punching above their weight – Tanisha Crasto and Dhruv Kapila, making their first World’s quarters in only their second season together. “Today is a positive day. Mixed doubles they won, Dhruv-Tanisha. The fire – it came back,” Satwik told BWF, adding it had inspired him, “I was watching the match. Then Sindhu won. It’s a positive sign for us when everyone is winning. I also felt that we should win too. It’s a positive mood.”
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The scarring of Olympics is never to be forgotten though, and how it made them feel. But Paris offers redemption. “We have played enough big stage matches, Thomas Cup final that changed our whole career on how to handle situations. Especially team events are really special. Once you handle that you can really….we have played few good matches, Olympics also we have played here. It’s a repeat of Olympics, maybe same court, same place, we meet them. This tournament we are not looking at opponents, just focussing on ourselves. Play and see what opponents throw at us,” Satwik told BWF.
