Chinese wall of noise, injuries take toll as shuttlers win first-ever silver in men's team badminton
It's not easy to play China in its own backyard, that too in badminton. To get the feel, one has to be seated inside the competition venue to realise what rival players go through when up against local favourites and a vociferous partisan crowd - lustily roaring and cheering every point won that sets the intimidating ambience and unsettles your nerves.
As India's Lakshya Sen rightly puts it: "We were playing against the home crowd, so sometimes you have just got to stuff your ears with cotton and soldier on".
Sen, along with the formidable doubles pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, did manage to shut out the noise - even perhaps silence the home crowd -with their impeccable strokeplay. But others failed to scale the wall of noise as India finished with silver in the men's team badminton event, losing to defending champions China 2-3 in a hard-fought final.
For the record books, it was India's first-ever silver in the men's team competition at the Asiad and second after P V Sindhu's women's singles final dash at Jakarta 2018. India have now won 11 medals - two silver and nine bronze - in the sport since its debut at the Asiad in 1962. However, the country's wait for that elusive gold medal will continue. China won its seventh men's team event title. India was hamstrung by the absence of their top-ranked singles player, H S Prannoy, who suffered a back injury after Saturday's semifinal against South Korea and doubles specialist, MR Arjun, who, too, found himself sidelined due to a niggle.
"We missed the services of Prannoy. He is our top-ranked player. He was unwell after our semifinal win against South Korea and couldn't recover on time. We didn't want to play him because of his back injury. His presence would have actually added to the team's strength," said India's chief national badminton coach, Pullela Gopichand later.
In the final, Sen was the first up to take the court against Shi Yuqi. The reigning CWG champion dug deep to pocket the first game before Yuqi made a fine comeback to clinch the second. It all boiled down to the decider where Sen trailed his opponent 8-13. He rallied through some attacking smashes and excellent net play to put India ahead.
In the second match, the duo of Chirag and Satwik prevailed over World No 2 pair of Weikeng Liang and Chang Wang 21-15, 21-18 to hand India a 2-0 lead. It was all left to former world No 1, Kidambi Srikanth, filling in Prannoy's absence, to shuttle down the gold for India by winning the third match. But it wasn't meant to be. Up against the reigning All England champion, Li Shifeng, the Indian succumbed to pressure and lost 22-24, 9-21.
"It wasn't a great feeling to go down this way. I am not happy with my performance, especially in the second game. I really wanted to win this for us. Maybe, when I was leading in the first game, I should have just finished it, but I conceded two or three points and then he just took over," Srikanth said.
The Indian coaching staff was banking on a Srikanth win since they knew that it would be a herculean task for the others who'd follow to beat the Chinese.
After injury to Arjun, Gopichand was forced to pair Dhruv Kapila with K Sai Pratheek, to face off the world No 8 doubles team of Yuchen Liu and Xuanyi Ou. The Indians lost 6-21, 15-21 as the title clash headed into a decider where singles player, Mithun Manjunath, a world No 53, took on world No 20 Weng Hongyang. Manjunath found the going tough against his opponent and lost tamely 12-21, 4-21.
The women's team had lost in the quarterfinals to Thailand.
