Indonesia Open: Satwik-Chirag survive litany of errors, clutch up in end game to reach last eight

Indian Express

2 days ago

It is perhaps Abhinav Bindra's favourite mantra – 'seeking perfection on an imperfect day.' It's the sort of match where their Indian coaches in Hyderabad won't hesitate to call the level of their errors throughout the match 'rubbish' to Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty's faces – before gushing about how the denouement wound up being 'bloody brilliant'.
Chirag himself spoke of the pair 'playing stupid', before a Satwik service at 19-20 ended up being 'phenomenal' and how his own serve was 'quite good' at 20-20 in the decider, after an hour of nightmarish serves from them. Coach Tan Kim Her even told them at some point that 'it's OK if you lose.' They never looked like winning, until they did.
Out of these far-from-ideal moments in a 68-minute cliffhanger, full of landslides, hatched out a 16-21, 21-18, 22-20 win that put the Indians into the quarterfinals of the Indonesia Open Super 1000 – one of the four biggest Tour events in badminton.
As Satwik-Chirag beat Danish Rasmus Kjaer and Frederik Sogaard, who had evicted World No 3 Aaron-Wooi in the previous round, some jarring notes were hit, before the last 3 minutes of the game suddenly turned magical. It was bad badminton all-round, but none more wincing for those watching that the two Indians clanged their racquets twice, going for the same shuttle in shuddering moments of confusion.
Chirag was faulted on his serve multiple times; Satwik's service was plain pulped and smothered by Kjaer-Sogaard, and that wasn't even the worst of the sorry statistics. The Danes deployed tumble serves freely and fiendishly, and were under strict orders to inflict maximum damage on the Indians via a known vulnerability – Satwik-Chirag's tentative return of serves that has blighted their past two seasons.
The Indian attack, which is always so cohesive, lacked any sting and was drowning in scratchy shot-making and cacophonous exchanges. Chirag was mighty cagey at the net initially, and Satwik a tad unsure of whether to fill in on the front court or control from the back. All this meant, the Danes, unusually upbeat and bouncy, led through the first set, and took it on a canter.
At the change of ends, the Indian nerves settled. And though they remained mismatched in their tempo and prone to errors with their tame lifts, the basic serve and receiving in the first three shots got calmer. Chirag – as it happens so often – forgot about trying to make his net-job seem perfect and precise, and allowed his instinct to rule as he started getting in winners, freeing up Satwik to send his pushes and curling lifts to scatter the Danes. They went from 14-14 to 19-14 in a jiffy with smarter interceptions, and pushed the decider.
The racquets clashing at 8-8, a Kjaer flick serve looping over them and shoddy high lifts made them look like a pair that was World No 22. But of course, at a cellular, fundamental level, these are World No 1s, with an ability to win in their sinewy muscle memory. So the match rumbled on to 19-19.
It was here that Satwik went for broke with a risky flat drive serve that no analyst might find a precedent off against his name. 'Maybe it was game awareness,' he told BWF. 'No one in the stadium will expect me to do a flat service. I never practice those. I told Chirag, OK, I want to try. Because nobody will expect it. For sure, even if they watch videos, they won't find me shooting it. They will find Chirag shooting it. I don't have the feeling of doing a short serve and catching the next one… so I just tried,' he mused.
Chirag errors always are followed by 3 winners he takes it upon himself to compensate with. The last rally was scrappy, but Satwik scooped one that fell on the sideline at the back. In the quarters, they play the Malaysians Man-Tee.
Satwik accepted the win was scrappy. 'Today we were not at our best…we only gave away points…15-20 points. They didn't do anything. We made mistakes. I felt we were not focussed enough. We were not there today. But we kept on believing in one point at a time. Coach kept telling us to calm down. Relax. He said it's OK if you lose also. We said let's play our game. See how it goes. That's why I pointed to the coach (after the win) to indicate, yes, we listened to you.'