Cometh the hour, cometh…. Strike that. Translate to Indianese: Cometh the Badminton World Championships, Cometh PV Sindhu, and her Chinese-slaying game. It fetches up, without missing a beat. Chinese women’s singles’ ‘Sindhu from Yindu’ curse simply doesn’t relent, and on Thursday in Paris, it was World No.2 Wang Zhi Yi utterly befuddled and reeling from the powerful attack and aggression that Sindhu dished out in a 21-19, 21-15 minute demolition of pristine vintage.
Sindhu needs to beat Indonesian buzzing bee Putri Kusuma Wardani, on Friday in the quarters to ensure her sixth World Championship medal and go past Chinese great Zhang Ning, who also has five. Carolina Marin has three World titles, but six Worlds medals is unprecedented.
Twelve years after she won her first at Guangzhou, it was still that irrepressible power-game, an attack that can’t be tamed, a style of play that cannot be contained or restrained into ordinary logic of form, rankings and reputations.
Like Pullela Gopichand had said before the World Championships, “It’s Sindhu. Her big power game is far too good to need a great preceding season. She can lose 10 matches, and still turn up to win that one big one that matters.”
Indonesian coach Irwansyah was brought in for precisely this: to make Sindhu believe in the indestructibility of her own attack, her power that can down four generations of Chinese women’s singles shuttlers, the latest being the season’s form player, Wang Zhi Yi.
Here’s a list of all the Chinese Sindhu has beaten at World Championships – Li Xuerui, Wang Yihan, Wang Shixian (twice) and Chen Yufei (twice). Not that she needed extra motivation, for she’s also beaten Tai Tzu-Ying and Nozomi Okuhara at the Worlds, but on the biggest stage, the Chinese have found her especially formidable and tough to get past, with the pressure of doing well bearing down on them too. The belief is always extraordinary in Sindhu that she can get past anyone at Worlds – because she simply has done it before.
A few nips and tucks to the game, and she was bound to unleash the OG game on Wang Zhi Yi too – the rankings rendered irrelevant. On Thursday, Sindhu fronted to every weakness that held her back – and came out a winner.
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Willingness to hit hard down the middle of the court. Check. Sharpness at the net and not backing off from eyeball exchanges. Check. Smashes peppered at her body – defended with the tiniest of racquet grip tweaks. Check.
PV Sindhu celebrates her Round of 16 victory over World No.2 Wang Zhi Yi at BWF World Championships 2025. (PHOTO: BWF / Badminton Photo)
Tweaks work like a treat
Irwansyah, who made an absolute champion out of Jonatan Christie, was working his magic again – steadily, but assuredly. He had given Sindhu’s power game the wings it needed – or the air-cutting blades of a chopper, rather. She had exited nine tournaments early this season. No matter. The world championship didn’t need a long runway for her to take off. She would soar like a whirring chopper.
Zhi Yi would have felt the world closing in on her. Unlike the first two matches (Sindhu starting World Championship games slowly is a ritual almost), Sindhu raced to a 11-6 lead. It’s not that three-set wins are uncool, but for someone with Sindhu’s power, they are unnecessary when she can wrap it up in two.
Pusarla V. Sindhu 🇮🇳 faces up to No.2 seed Wang Zhi Yi 🇨🇳. #BWFWorldChampionships #Paris2025 pic.twitter.com/8Vmqvglun8
— BWF (@bwfmedia) August 28, 2025
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The game was simple. She backed her smash, buried it into the court, hitting straight and wasn’t second guessing if Zhi Yi would go retrieve it. It’s how World No.1 An Se-young has beaten the Chinese.
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Sindhu, playing freely, without fear of expectations, knowing her fitness core would hold strong, rained down winners on the middle lane. No flirting with the lines, risking it on precision which might or might not go her way. Even when she played cross – the angles had Irwansyah stamped on them – she looked one shot away from nailing the winner, but minus the desperation of stabbing at smashes. She allowed her power to breathe, not smothering it by reckless speed, as she had been doing earlier.
The result was Sindhu constructing points and choosing her moments to kill. Her defence stayed steady, and like the first two matches, the intensity was spot on from point 17 onwards. Sindhu led 16-14 and fell back 17-19 as Zhi Yi threw the kitchen sink at her. Shoulders didn’t droop though, Sindhu held steady, and kept her attack sharp, unwilling to crumble, to take the opener.
Cutting down on errors had been as simple as not heeding to or following what the opponent was doing. The first set pocketed, she simply felt far too confident to step back.
Still from a 10-6 lead in the second to 12-10, she allowed Zhi Yi a sniff. A touch slow to get back to base on defence and react, she was vulnerable in long rallies – not because of tiredness, but that habitual hope that the shuttle would drift long. No matter, she could regroup and continue to pile the pressure on Zhi Yi by keeping her petrified of that smash, the dives in vain only adding to Sindhu’s confidence.
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Tight at net
But it was in the finishing that the former World champion showed why she can rattle the Chinese. Sindhu is not shy of the net game, but confidence ebbs and flows can hugely detract her from staying nerveless in the front court. Not today. She kept the tumbles tight, and her height allowed her to play from further from the meshing while forcing Zhi Yi to linger too close and risk faulting. It even gave Sindhu a point at 18-13.
But it was on 17-12 that Sindhu announced her intent to dominate. Fending off body attacks, she didn’t back from the mid-court, kept charging ahead, intercepted with her long levers at the net and finally sent one looping over Wang Zhi Yi’s mushroom moptop, driving her to despair. It was the point that proverbially broke the camel’s back.
The Chinese coach could barely believe what he was seeing. And Sindhu used all her experience to deny Zhi Yi time to catch a breather. The Chinese did what Sindhu usually resorts to – tried to increase her hand speed, blindly. The idea was doomed from conception. Sindhu defended stoutly, and stayed audacious at the net.
One match point was saved, but Sindhu was there at the net, lording over it, looming large on the Chinese legend, dominating that landscape, and Zhi Yi knew she was a goner. The final point came at the net. It came because finally, Sindhu, the Worlds specialist, had realised that her big power game doesn’t have to fetch her points directly. It can be used to scare, startle, scurry, scavenge at the opponent’s confidence, lay siege to their sinews and strangle their self-belief. The big smash, Sindhu now knows, can be a means to an end.
