It’s a storm Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty have now signed up for. Having willingly opened themselves up to the aftermath of asking why they don’t get enough appreciation, the duo reckon the only way to ride this hurricane is accept the tempestuous nature of reactions that will follow. The uneasy calm — indifference to a Thomas Cup bronze — has never been their style. So they will barrel through the wave of reactions that descended on them.
Speaking to BWF after entering a regulation quarterfinal at the Thailand Open where they are top seeds, Satwik-Chirag grinned and paused a tad, to thank their fans.
“Ofcourse there are many good people who stay up late at night and watch our matches,” Satwik would say. “There were negatives as well when we spoke, but more than that I saw almost 90 per cent positive reactions. That is a good sign.”
For Chirag, the statements blew up much more than they expected. “There were obviously lot of critics, but there were also a lot of very positive comments. My timeline is flooded with a lot of positive reactions. I think that is a very positive sign because the conversation at least started,” he would say.
Given their gregarious, song and dance-loving personalities, the positives will stick on longer to their minds. The losses on the Tour where they play every other week might pile up too. Injuries might recur, but they will get back up after what happened this last fortnight. It bears remembering that the men’s doubles Olympics champions the last two times, Wang Chi Lin and Lee Yang, won only 1 Super 750 title in the intervening years and prioritised their fitness above everything else — incidentally the stated goal for Satwik-Chirag for 2026, before they exploded after this Thomas Cup bronze.
Inadvertently, this bunch of shuttlers has fallen in love with team events, in a highly individualised sport. Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu barely ever sparred in practice, and China and Japan’s top singles players assiduously keep separate teams for each top name. But the 2022 Thomas Cup gold turned the individual-coded men’s shuttlers from India into a very tight unit. The bonding became infectious — it set a standard. It’s why the tepid reaction back in India from the general population stumped them all. Though it took them four years to stew and erupt like a latent volcano.
“I think team events are truly special for professional players because badminton is largely an individual sport and you don’t get too many opportunities to play as a team. But it’s one of the best things about badminton. But whenever you do, everybody loves it,” Chirag told BWF.
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“If you ask players from any country, they will say the same thing. The euphoria, the tension, and the pressure make team events really exciting. I think it is one of the best things about badminton.”
It’s why after the World Championships at home, the Asian Games is immediately something that perks them up. India won silver last time behind China. “The Asian Games is obviously a very big event. Along with the World Championships, it is one of the major events of the year, and we really want to do well there,” Chirag said. A gold might bring closure to the 2022 hurt, which went unexpressed for four years.
“My main point after the first interview …. obviously we didn’t expect anyone to come for the bronze medal since we had won the gold. I was unhappy because of the reception that we got back in 2022. We deserved a much bigger celebration. Nobody in their wildest dream would have expected India to win a Thomas Cup gold,” Chirag reiterates, as Satwik Chuckles, “There wasn’t even one person who would’ve said India would win the Thomas Cup.”
While critics have mistaken their plea for expectation of rewards, Satwik has a simpler request: “More than the celebration, people are not watching badminton. That is what we felt like,” Satwik said. Watch it on stream, on linear TV, in clips, in reels, even in ranting criticisms.
