Ahead of his 2024 All England when he was struggling to qualify for the Paris Olympics, Lakshya Sen had insisted on getting himself a 10-year visa for the United Kingdom. Coach Vimal Kumar had jokingly asked how many titles he planned to win playing for a decade, when Sen told him, “I’ll win at least 3-4, and make the finals minimum 8 times.” With two finals under his belt, and a week to remember, Sen wasn’t jesting. “The All England will be his one day,” Vimal insists, even if Sunday ended in a 21-15, 22-20 loss to Lin Chun-Yi of Taiwan.
The foot blister was painful, and his movement not the most fluent after Sen had played 91 minutes more than his opponent in 4 tallied matches (316 as compared to 226 minutes of Chun-Yi.)
But what deterred his counter-punching, that was a feature of his four previous wins, was muscle fatigue in his shoulder, the coach informs. “The shoulder was gone, there was no punch in his smashes,” he said.
AS IT HAPPENED | LAKSHYA SEN VS LIN CHUN-YI ALL ENGLAND FINAL BADMINTON HIGHLIGHTS
Sen was error-prone in the first, under a perennial barrage of hard hits throughout, and was ultimately spent, when things got to 20-20 in the second. His restricted movement hampered his efficiency and accuracy in his shot quality. Chun-Yi brings a left-handed game, that isn’t terribly deceptive, and he doesn’t bother nuancing his smashes. The Taiwanese boasts of some of the hardest hits on the circuit, the crunching power not easily calculable on a measuring machine, but felt on the defenders’ racquet strings. All this week, Sen had been drawing inspiration from his defence, both reflex and anticipated, and refuelling his attack with that confidence. But against Chun-Yi, it dented the quality of returns because of how the shuttle thudded on the racquet.
The Taiwanese started scorching with his cross-court smashes, the angles of which were disorienting. Sen unveiled all his defensive tricks – behind-the-back return and even a pirouette. But the subsequent return invariably went into the net because of the poundage behind the smashes coming his way. Chun-Yi pulled away at 11-16, and pocketed the first game 21-15 as he played basic diagonal men’s singles badminton.
Sen did well to take a 10-5 lead in the second, as Chun-Yi’s attack paused like a buffer on low data. But then the Indian inexplicably lost his own radar, allowing him a comeback from 6-10 to 8-10. The gameplan required him to contain the Taiwanese, but his tired shoulder couldn’t inject pace and crucial errors crept in at key moments.
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Last resort
At 14-14, Sen went for broke and increased the pace, forgetting that Chun-Yi isn’t afraid of quick exchanges. His defence might not be as sensational as Sen’s but it’s dependable and can hold strong, till he finds an opening. Chun-Yi stuck on, and even after Sen won a 46-shot rally with a winner on the backline, Chun persevered. The counter-punching was tame, and it was humanly impossible to train for a fifth straight crunching day.
Runner-up Lakshya Sen and Champion Lin Chun Yi of the All England Open 2026. (CREDIT: Badminton Photo)
For 18-all, the Taiwanese literally sent Sen scurrying to three corners, then sent an irretrievable smash cross-court. A scrambled and scattered poor lift (a rare bad one) from Sen gave Chun-Yi his first match point at 20-19. A defiant Sen retrieved courageously to delay the inevitable. For his second match point, the two literally flung limbs in all directions and a Sen parry sailed wide. A quick second return from Chun-Yi saw Sen parry wide and that was that.
With his style, he would need to find ways to finish in two sets, but Victor Lai, the retriever on loop, happened to him in the toughest draw possible.
Sen conceded Chun-Yi was the better player in the first game. “The first game … he was the better player, but in the second game, I could have finished off better,” he told BWF. “But I’m happy with the way I played throughout the week. Pretty emotional right now, thinking about the match. But overall, there are lots of positives to take.”
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He also said his physical condition wasn’t perfect for the final. “Not ideal, to be honest. …And I couldn’t recover 100 percent,” he said.
Vimal Kumar intends to talk to him about Ivan Lendl and how he lost 6-7 US Open finals before he eventually won. “He should not lose his spirit. We can talk from outside but it’s very tough on the athlete (to dust up and start again).”
Sen’s next target, Vimal informs, will be the Asian Badminton Championships which he is keen to win. “That’s pretty important and then there’s the World Championships in Delhi,” he adds.
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Like a bad memory, fatigue “stays in the legs”, as PV Sindhu eloquently put it in her post. But there’s a 10 year stamped visa on the Indian’s passport. Lakshya Sen intends to use it fully and All Englandly.
