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Shuttling to a new high

ByRutvick Mehta
Aug 09, 2022 07:38 AM IST

The badminton campaign which started with a heartbreaking defeat in the mixed team event has ended on a much better note. Never have India won three gold medals at a single CWG Games and the performance showed how the youngsters are slowly but surely starting to take centrestage. Sindhu is a veteran but Lakshya, Satwik and Chirag, Treesa and Gayatri are still at the starting line. Come Paris, they will be ready.

Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty lived the entire Games experience. They would turn up to catch a glimpse of action from other sports around the NEC halls—Satwik keenly followed Jeremy Lalrinnunga’s lifts—or hold a reporter’s mic to conduct a mock interview.

Birmingham: India's Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty celebrate after winning the Men's Doubles Final(PTI)
Birmingham: India's Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty celebrate after winning the Men's Doubles Final(PTI)

They also played some badminton along the way, and were pretty good at that too. The pair became the first men’s doubles champions from India at the Commonwealth Games (CWG) defeating the English combo of Ben Lane and Sean Vendy 21-15, 21-13 for the gold. Six Indians find a place in the singles list of CWG gold medallists—two of them were added on Monday itself—and the pair of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa in the women’s doubles.

“We really wanted this thing badly, no matter who we were playing against,” Satwik said. “We wanted to be on the podium wearing the gold medal, not any other medal. We really came out and played very strong.”

Satwik and Chirag had to make do with the silver medal at the 2018 Gold Coast CWG. But there’s a striking contrast in the combo then and the combo now. The duo hasn’t dropped out of the top-10 charts of the BWF doubles rankings since first getting there in 2020. This season, they won the India Open crown before playing a key part in India’s historic Thomas Cup triumph where they beat each of their rivals in the quarter-finals (Malaysia), semi-finals (Denmark) and final (Indonesia). The belief of being right at the top, therefore, was far greater this time.

“In 2018, we were still a young pair. We had just entered the scene and were quite new to the world stage in terms of playing top-rung tournaments,” Shetty had said days before leaving for Birmingham. “Now we are a more experienced pair, where we have played top-level badminton and have been in the top 10 (rankings) for a few years now.”

It helped them that the tone for the final day was set by PV Sindhu and Lakshya Sen before they walked out on court.

Sindhu was primed to coast to the gold here, and she did, beating Canada’s Michelle Li 21-15, 21-13 in the final. An issue with the Achilles after the quarter-final win though complicated things just a little. And got her coach, Park Tae Sang, worried while she was warming up before the final. Her movement, clearly visible with that strapped ankle, had been hampered.

But not enough to cause too much trouble against Li, who looked rushed more often than not returning Sindhu’s power and precision filled strokes while also being no match to the Indian in those exchanges at the net.

“In the semi-final her (Sindhu) movement was very slow in the first game. I know her Achilles was taped. But after the semis, she recovered well,” Park said.

“She took an ice bath in the Games Village. Today (Monday) when she was warming up before the match, I was a little worried. Her movement was a little bad. Little slow. So I was a little worried before the game. But finally, we did it,” he added.

Sindhu was glad to pull through too. Even more so about the prospect of adding the CWG gold medal for the first time in her medal-flowing cabinet. Four years ago in Gold Coast, she had lost to Saina Nehwal in the final. In 2014 in Glasgow, she fell short against Li, who beat her in the semi-final as Sindhu eventually took the bronze.

“This medal feels really nice because it was a much-awaited win. I had been waiting for a long time and I have finally done it,” she said.

Sen, playing after her more accomplished compatriot, turned the tables on Malaysia’s Ng Tze Yong to down him 19-21, 21-9, 21-16 in the gold medal match. The young rising star of Indian badminton scooped the top prize from his maiden taste of CWG.

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