Satwik-Chirag seal China Masters Super 750 title with a fighting win over He-Ren

On Sunday in Shenzhen, not only did Satwik-Chirag end a finals jinx in their third attempt – a charm, at the China Masters after having lost two finals. Satwik also, finally, seemed to have found confidence in handling the service “situation”. (BWF/Badminton Photo)

His coaches – a cohort dedicated to keeping him happy and hopeful, as well as winning – might have considered not alerting him to the chink in the armour at all: psychology favours that. But the losses arising from the Indians getting cornered with frenzied ambushes on the first three strokes were piling up.

Accustomed to winning titles relying on their steep attack, they were copping defeats. Chirag got down to problem-solving in his own meticulous way. But just as well that when injuries struck, Satwik too eased out of smashing mode and got down to work on the biomechanical part of the serve-receive problem, and is now in the happy zone where he knows it’s a matter of backing his serve and feeling confident.

“It’s very rare I get five points on my service. It’s always Chirag who takes the game. But the quarterfinals against Astrup-Rasmussen gave us confidence,” Satwik explained to BWF after the Indians won four three-game matches to emerge triumphant at the end of the week.

“It was the same scenario when we were down and then 17-all. I practised services a lot. When I was injured also, I practiced serve and receive. It’s helped in the last two tournaments. But it’s just a feeling, mental thing – you need to believe your serve is good. There’s been a lot of behind-the-scenes with the coach because opponents target me when I’m serving. We saw a lot of videos of people targeting me. They want to challenge me. In the third game, I was pretty calm. Even Chirag was telling me to stay calm saying, ‘We’re in control.’ We didn’t panic much. Just served and played according to the shuttle,” he added.

Bouncing back

Plenty has taken its toll on Satwik’s confidence. Losing a parent, the Olympics heartbreak, the trolling after the Thomas Cup bronze after he spoke of wanting to be acknowledged. And the shoulder that doesn’t let him hit a smash as he once could. All this week and in the final against the local pairing, Satwik and Chirag backed themselves to not get pushed into a corner. The Shenzhen Super 750 title was a coat of varnish on that chipped confidence, after a sandpaper of technical training had smoothened the edges.

The opponents were lower-ranked, but the Chinese came out swinging in all three games – 0-5, 1-3, 0-4 starts for the Indians as He-Ren went aggressive with deep pushes.

In the opener, the Chinese came at them with the doubles ambush of letting speed overwhelm everything else. Chirag explained, “In the first game, aggression wasn’t lacking. But we weren’t playing the right strokes. We were playing a style which favoured them. And then they come out all guns blazing. You don’t really find space to play against them because they are extremely fast and furious. So in the second, we wanted to be aggressive but mindfully aggressive.”

A 5-11 deficit just kept extending and the Indians found themselves a game down in no time.

The path back involved straight attacks both to avoid the drift and because the Indians found the precise lengths on tall parallels. The towering Chinese with their strong defence couldn’t be bullied with a steep attack. But the straight hits adopted by Satwik-Chirag caught the Chinese flush as the match got levelled.

Once in the decider, the battling game whistled out like a train exiting a tunnel. The Satwik serve was on a roll.

The Chinese had a gameplan that went beyond the fast parallels usually used against the Indians. But bisecting the Satwik-Chirag duo isn’t sustainable when the Indians turn the tables on opponents using the same mid-line shelling to carve into the Chinese defence. Confidence in serve and reception did the rest.

The gnarly white bear was out of sight, out of mind, and out of the frame.