Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Badminton came late to the Olympics, at Barcelona in 1992. But the Games can change the institutional memory of a sport very fast, and the highest prize for a badminton player today is arguably the Olympic gold. Saina Nehwal knows it when she leaves the court after her quarter-final on Wednesday morning.
8220;I want to play her now,8221; she says minutes after losing a curious last set to Maria Kristin Yulianti of Indonesia.
We wish. So she explains herself instead: 8220;I don8217;t know what happened. Maybe I made a lot of mistakes. I don8217;t know.8221; Then: 8220;I8217;ll be much more prepared next time. I8217;ll be much more experienced.8221;
At 18, she has time to acclimatise to her ambition. It is, also, not an airy promise. Today, it is not that she came so close to making it to the last four 8212; in a three-gamer, she had a 28-26, 14-21, 11-3 lead, till Yulianti took away the last game 20-15. There is a bronze medal playoff. It is, as her coach Pullela Gopichand says, her desire to win so badly, her impatience with sitting back and looking for cheap points. In fact, if anything, she works too hard to create the point.
Out of his earshot, Nehwal illustrates the assessment. Ask her what is the one thing she8217;d change from the match today, and the prospect of reliving the match relaxes her features for the first time: 8220;I wouldn8217;t have given up the lead. I would have finished the match.8221;
Badminton8217;s new scoring rules, in fact, make it that much easier for a match to be taken away. After Athens, a rallying point scoring system was introduced in which a point is won or lost on each serve. Earlier, points were scored only by the server and if the server lost the point, the serve would shift to the opponent, without a change in the scoreline. Now also factor in the fact that the shuttle travels at speeds faster than in any other net sport at the Games. Nehwal and Yulianti were the only unseeded players in the last eight, and Yualianti will now take on China8217;s Zhang Ning, the defending title-holder. The top three seeds in the women8217;s draw are all Chinese.
With the Olympics coincides India8217;s four-yearly conversation with sport. It8217;s not just an Indian habit. It8217;s when most everybody takes stock. After every match walk through the mixed zone 8212; the area where reporting media talk to athletes as they leave the venue 8212; and the questions come more from informed curiosity than expertise. Today, for instance, at the Water Cube a reporter asks a diver why he stands under the shower after each dive. To clear his mind.
Away from the waiting India media, Nehwal is asked about the popularity of badminton in India. 8220;Everyone enjoys playing this game,8221; she answers. 8220;But it is not too popular.8221;
She could also have told them that for the serious player, it is lonely. The big match experience is mostly never gathered as a team. Yulianti may be unseeded here, but she has twice been part of a second-seeded team at the Uber Cup. From the sidelines she can soak in experience.
Or as Gopichand says, it helps to be part of a cluster of top players.
But in the end is the memory of that first game.
