Had the new badminton scoring system been in operation, PV Sindhu would’ve won all three sets against Wang Zhi Yi, the World No 2, who by now must be battling nightmares of the Indian who now looks agile, ageless and aggressive whenever she turns up. 15-13, 15-13, 15-10 were Sindhu’s dominant leads. But the Chinese know how to finish things, especially the ones they don’t start.
Playing the first singles of the Uber Cup, knowing in their heart of hearts that she was India’s only possibility for a defiant point against the mighty China, Sindhu was her usual menacing, marauding self, like she’s been since the age of 17. But all those years that Sindhu had banished the Chinese away from podiums right until the 2025 World Championships, Wang Zhi Yi had been on her own Sindhu-path of old: one of long, punishing, effortful matches, narrow 21-19 losses in deciders, getting dubbed Silver Zhi Yi after losing 10 finals. That was until the 25-year-old World No 2 plugged most gaps and started winning.
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So, it was that clutch play, raising the pace and accuracy and blind hitting-brilliance from muscle memory that helped Zhi Yi pull off two comebacks in the two sets she won. In the opening set, Sindhu was 14-11 up. Zhi Yi took 11 of the next 13 points, including 7 in a row to make it 21-16. After forcing a decider, Sindhu once more stayed ahead and went 18-12 up. But Zhi Yi has been forced to turn gladiatorial and claw back from impossibilities so often by An Se-young that she once again launched an uphill climb with intense retrieving and winners from imbalanced positions, taking nine of the next 10 points.
Sindhu was afforded only one crosscourt smash in this period, as she ended on the losing side, 16-21, 21-19, 19-21.
A 5-0 margin that saw India miss out on Uber Cup quarterfinals for the first time since 2018 will never zoom in on how close Sindhu came to nicking this, nor will the close 21-19 margin of the decider be able to magnify how Zhi Yi flipped the script at the finish. But the pained expressions of Chinese coaches watching from the corners as Sindhu threatened to slay the nemesis into her 13th year of troubling the Chinese, told the story.
There’s a fluency that’s come into Sindhu’s game since she started training with coach Irwansyah. Even he can’t get her to close out calmly and without allowing chaos into her thinking at the finish. But when fit, she moves well; her straight smashes have variations, her net pushes make her a looming presence at the net. And all that doubles with Tanisha Crasto has added the midcourt parallels to her options. Against Zhi Yi, though, it was the tumbles and drops at the net with pace squeezed out that yielded most dividends, as the lunging Zhi Yi could do very little to stem the points flowing towards Sindhu from her errors.
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Sindhu’s never been a slam-bang shuttler, but it needs a good day to see her manoeuvre opponents around and construct points by playing those two extra set-up shots. The defense looks polished with her tweaked stance, and at one point mid-match, she had Zhi Yi flat on her back after being yo-yoed across the flanks. She stroked freely and used the body smashes well.
But Zhi Yi chose her closing strokes better, had a point to prove, and chomped into Sindhu’s leads, knowing the Indian starts second-guessing once that happens.
The gap with China may be huge, and the Indian women (except Sindhu) are way off the endurance needed for pushing deciders and fighting in them. But Isharani Baruah did jolt Chen Yufei with her speedy game and clean striking.
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Ambushing the former Olympic champion with a 4-0 lead, she led till 13-9 and 19-15, managing to wrongfoot the women’s singles player with stellar footwork. Especially adept in long rallies, with her jump smashes and zero fear of reputation, she will long regret not managing to finish it off from there, missing at 20-19. She bounced on the court, hopping on her toes on a horizontal breadth, and showed great speed in cross smashes. But that 20-19 miss will haunt her for long.
Her propensity to let shuttles fall well inside the backline also led to a frustrating number of very silly errors and raised her coach’s anger cues.
After Shruti-Priya had lost the first doubles 21-11, 21-8, not much was expected of the second doubles. But Tanisha Crasto and Kavipriya Selvam gave a good account of themselves, though their finishing was equally tepid, as they went down 21-10, 12-21, 19-21.
Tanisha showed some incredible electricity in her ability to string together one rally after another, without dropping shoulders. She plays a pretty buzzing and edgy game, but Kavipriya is clearly a cool head at the net with good hand skills and defensive rigour.
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The Chinese — Luo Xu Min and Zhang Shu Xian — didn’t quite settle through the length of the match except when they took off at 13-all in the decider. Then the finishing protocols kicked in.
In the final match for India, Xu Wen Jing took a pretty long time to figure out that Devika Sihag’s ground defense, the lunge, the sweeping low pickups at the forecourt are rather weak. Once she knew that, she raced to a 19-21, 21-17, 21-10 win. Devika has piercing strokes and some delectable slice drops from midcourt. But, the net game and defense are leagues away from fetching any substantial gains.
5-0 still held lots of positives, given the fact that the Indians battled for 78, 34, 44, 59, 58 minutes respectively. There wasn’t a lack of stamina or endurance on show here – this was poor game awareness as the Uber dream crashed, 10 years after India’s Olympic silver medal, knocked out before the knockouts.
