At his best, Lin Dan is the greatest badminton player of all time and deemed invincible by all contemporaries. But even at his worst — when injury makes him wobble — the five-time World Champion is considered shuttling divinity’s Lazarus, the man who can rise from the dead any moment of the match.
Only two men have snatched matches from the twice Olympic champion since the 2012 London Games — Jan O Jorgensen and Sony Dwi Kuncoro. And China has not seen him lose at home in a decade. So when Lin Dan, recovering from an ankle injury, turned up at Fuzhou this week, it could only mean one thing: Kidambi Srikanth of India stood no chance even if he suddenly found himself in the finals of the Premier Super Series at China.
Except, Srikanth upturned all logic and calculation by beating Super Dan 21-19, 21-17 at the spaceship-like futuristic stadium in eastern China. In achieving that, he even pushed to the back pages Saina Nehwal’s heart-warming return as champion after she beat Japanese Akane Yamaguchi 21-12, 22-20 for her eighth Super Series title.
Srikanth, a brooding 21-year-old from Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, who grew up watching his father manage many acres of farms that grew paddy, had climbed the rankings ladder of men’s singles painstakingly to World No.16 and done nothing more spectacular than winning India’s first Grand Prix title in men’s singles at Thailand two years ago.
In fact, he reluctantly started playing singles a few years ago, and needed to be told by coach Pullela Gopichand that making the national doubles semis in U-19 did not constitute ‘ambition’.
On Sunday, the laidback shuttler confidently stuck to no fixed plan whatsoever (“It’s the only way to beat Lin Dan,” coach Gopichand said), improvised on his unorthodox strokes, and scored a tactically brilliant and historic title triumph for himself and India.
Considered India’s most talented player for some time now – talented, not always consistent – Srikanth had told his coach in his characteristically crisp fashion that he would only wish Gopichand on his birthday Sunday, if he could beat Lin Dan. And the Hyderabad coach, though happy at how his ward had been playing, wasn’t expecting to be wished.
Till the very last point, and given the number of times the world had seen Lin Dan defy defeat eventually, Gopichand waited nervously for the Chinese champ’s revival. “I jumped when Srikanth got the last one through. There’s disbelief because you never expect Lin Dan to lose, he always makes a comeback,” the coach said.
Srikanth had given the coach many continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment