To the beats of Dangal, Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy shook a leg on the court and the crowd joined them. To celebrate their historic men’s doubles gold medal, the two would rip their shirts and fling their racquets into the stands. The fans, mostly Chinese, reciprocated by humming the song, dancing with them and giving the warmest reception any Indian has received at these Games.
Hangzhou, for that brief moment, seemed like Haryana, until a tiny section of the crowd chanted, “Jiayou, Yindu!” Come on, India.
For the entire fortnight, India’s athletes have endured hostile surroundings, with the locals supporting anybody but them. In a dramatic turn of events, on the final night the mood changed.
Chirag and Satwik, with their power-packed entertaining brand game, regaled a hard-to-please nation that is so used to watching top quality badminton. So when the Indian pair showed the spectators some love, they got back a lot more.
Click here to read all of Mihir Vasavda’s dispatches from Hangzhou
The soon-to-be-crowned World No. 1 doubles pair swept the Binjiang Gymnasium off their feet to become the first Indian badminton players to win an Asian Games gold medal, beating South Korea’s Choi Solgyu and Kim Won Ho 21-18, 21-16.
A badminton gold in China was a cherry on the cake for India, who finished the Asian Games with their best-ever haul of 107 medals that included 28 gold, 38 silver and 41 bronze.
India comfortably surpassed its previous best of 70 medals, achieved in Jakarta five years ago, as the shuttlers, archers, cricketers, wrestlers, kabaddi and chess players all added to the tally on Saturday.
In these Games, where bizarre shook hands with the inexplicable on a daily basis, the final day of competition had all the drama – from protests to ad-hoc decisions to surreal exhibition of athletic abilities.
The Asiad finale for India began in a district on the outskirts of Hangzhou, in the serene surroundings of the mist-covered Fushu mountains.
Archer Jyothi Vennam began the gold rush by winning her third title of the Games, claiming the individual compound title in addition to the mixed and the women’s team gold she had already won. Like her, Ojas Deotale, too, completed his golden hat-trick after defeating compatriot Abhishek Verma in the individual final while 17-year-old Aditi Swami clinched the silver in her Games debut.
The smooth start to the morning descended into almost chaos by noon. The men’s kabaddi final between arch-rivals India and Iran saw both sides staging court-side sit-ins, protesting a referee decision. The match was suspended for almost an hour – longer than the 40-minute duration of a normal kabaddi game – and when it finally resumed, India reclaimed the title it had surrendered to Iran five years ago.
Kabaddi wasn’t the only venue where breaths were held and tempers frayed in an Asiad where contentious decisions were par for many a course.
India’s cricket team, led by Ruturaj Gaikwad, won the gold medal not by defeating Afghanistan in the final, but because they were the higher-seeded side among the two.
Put into bat, Afghanistan were teetering at 112 for 5 after 18.2 overs when it started to rain at the Pingfeng cricket field. The rain never relented and the match didn’t resume. So, the organisers decided that the gold medal should be handed to India since they were the higher ranked team.
“We worked hard for these Asian Games and deserved to win the final. Unfortunately for us, India are the top-ranked team in the world, so that’s why they are now the gold medallists,” Afghanistan’s Gulbadan Naib said after the match.
Yet, for India’s cricketers, who were competing in the Asian Games for the first time, the feeling of standing on top of the podium was unlike any they had experienced before. “It is something we are not used to, winning a medal,” Gaikwad was quoted as saying by the Games news service. “The feeling is slightly different, more emotional for everyone and everyone is really enjoying it.”
Amid the off-field drama, the badminton gold shone the brightest. For the sheer depth in competition, the medal, along with the table tennis doubles bronze won by Sutirtha Mukherjee and Ayhika Mukherjee, will rank among India’s biggest wins at these Games.
India’s badminton coach Pullela Gopichand put Satwik-Chirag’s title on par with winning an Olympic medal. Taking shelter in the stadium car park, it seemed Gopichand has the goosebumps as he explained the significance.
“It’s a huge win. The Asian Games, in some sense, is tougher than the Olympics… not from the medal scale perspective, where the Olympics would definitely be bigger,” Gopichand said. “But if you look at it (the competition) here, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and China, all have two teams. Almost nine countries have two entries. So that’s a tough draw to have. Whereas at the Olympics, you only have the top 13 nations playing so you might not have these many rounds of tough matches.”
The enormity of the occasion and the achievement will take some time to sink in for Chirag and Satwik who looked drained after two weeks of intense competition. The duo came to Hangzhou short on confidence. They leave with a team silver medal and doubles gold. A great gift for their nation and for their hosts, they turned a stadium full of partisan fans into some of their biggest cheerleaders.
For Team India, there couldn’t have been a setting more fitting for the Asiad curtains.
(LEFT) Archer Jyothi Surekha Vennam; (RIGHT)
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty. (PHOTOS: PTI/AP) 
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