On Sunday night in Jakarta, with the Indonesia Open title trophies safely in their hotel room, Indian badminton doubles players Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy will be going out for a celebratory dinner alongside their coaches and support staff. With a variety of tastes to cater to, doubles coach and former Olympic silver medallist Matthias Boe has decided the safest option for the meal will be an Indian.
“There’s an excellent Indian chef at the hotel we are staying at. He’s promised to make a proper Indian meal. He’s going to spin a lot of garlic naan for us. Satwik and Chirag are going to have a great meal,” he jokes over the phone from Jakarta.
The ascent
The dinner is well deserved. The Indonesia Open is one of just four World Tour 1000 events – the biggest on the BWF world tour. Playing at the iconic Istora Senayan stadium, the Indian pair dropped just one game in five matches. They blew past World No. one pair Fajar Alfian and Muhammad Ardianto 21-13 21-13 in the quarterfinals, before overturning a 0-8 record against World Champions Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik of Malaysia to cruise to a 21-17 21-18 win in the final. When the BWF rankings are released on Monday, the Indian pair should rise to a career-high World No. 3.
“This is of course a huge win in terms of qualification for the Olympics, but more importantly this is a win with all the top players playing. It’s not just about the win but the way they won. They played nearly flawlessly,” says national coach Pullela Gopichand, who was sitting in the coach’s corner for their final.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty after their triumph in Jakarta | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
But even as they savour a hearty meal and soak in what is easily the biggest win of their careers, it’s also true that just a couple of weeks ago, it had seemed that the two were just not hungry enough.
Not hungry enough?
Over the last year and a half, the Indian pair have enjoyed an incredibly rich vein of form. They were part of the Thomas Cup-winning team in 2022 and followed that up with a gold in the men’s doubles at the Commonwealth Games. A few weeks after the triumph in Birminmgham, they were wearing their first World medal – a bronze in Tokyo – around their neck. That was followed by a World Tour 750 title in France. 2023 seemed to be carrying off similarly. They beat a strong field to win the Swiss Open in March and then, a month later, became the first Indian doubles pair to win gold at the Asian Championships.
“We are in the good players’ group. We want to be in the champions group,” Satwik had told Sportstar at the start of the year and with their impressive results this certainly looked to be the case.
Then came two unexpected weeks at the start of June. They lost in the second round of the Thailand Open to World No. 13 Bagas Maulana and Muhammad Fikri of Indonesia. A week later, they were ousted in the first round of the Singapore Open by World No. 23 Akira Koga and Taichi Sato in a tight three-game match.
“In the last couple of weeks, we were not hungry enough. The last two tournaments were a wake-up call for us. We were lazy and passive,” Satwik admitted after the win in Jakarta.
That’s what Boe had noticed as well, especially as they faded away in the third game against lower-ranked opponents.
“In the game (against Bagas and Fikri) in Thailand they had won the first game. But they didn’t have the right attitude. Maybe they were a bit too relaxed or even overconfident thinking they had already won. But they weren’t hungry enough. They weren’t putting in that last 5-10 percent that they needed to in those matches,” he said.
It needed a few pep talks to get the two Indians’ heads back on track, says Boe even as he hints at tougher words being exchanged.
“You could be a great team and these guys are. But you need to be hungry and stay humble. That is absolutely true for them. If they aren’t hungry enough they aren’t winning. But if we are and we are focused, we have something special that the other pairs don’t have,” Boe says.
Power of being relentless
Regardless of the tactics, the fact is Chirag and Satwik were as sharp and focussed in Jakarta as they have ever been. “They had the right attitude here. I feel what happened this week is that they (Chirag and Satwik) were able to step up and support each other and play the crucial points rather than just expect the opponents would give up. They didn’t give any chance to their opponents until the match was over,” he says.
Indeed in Indonesia, the pair was always in the highest gear possible. That was part of the plan. The match against Bagas and Fikri in Thailand was a template on what not to do, says Boe. “We have had a few matches like that. Where we played a great first set but then started thinking ‘We already won’ and not finishing. We did have an issue with that and we ended up losing momentum,” he says.
There was no dropping off against World Champions Aaron and Soh. While the Malaysians came into the match with an 8-0 record in World Tour events against the Indians, Boe said he was confident that streak would not last.
Chirag and Satwik managed to turn a poor head-to-head record and an early deficit in the match to beat Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik to win the Indonesia Open. | Photo Credit: AP
“I’ve said before. I have a lot of respect for Aaron and Soh. They are world champions after all. But there is nothing about them that says they should have an 8-0 record against us. It should have been 4-4 or maybe 5-3 in their favour at most. But unfortunately in the past we have not played the right strategy and played the game that suits them,” he says.
Ahead of the final, the strategy for the Indians was to avoid doing that. “In the past, we would get caught playing a flat game against them. This time the plan was not to hold ourselves back when. We knew we had to be upfront. We knew we had to keep the rallies short. At the end of each of the eight matches which we lost against them, we ended up feeling we should have defended better, but that was because we were just playing their game which is to play flat and fast. This time we felt we had to attack the first four shots itself. That way we wanted them to work and take the point. In the past maybe we didn’t have the defence to play that sort of game but we know we have a very strong defence right now,” Satwik says.
Overcome with emotion | Photo Credit: AP
Even when the Indians got off to a poor start trailing 7-3 in the first game, there was no second-guessing of tactics. Video analysis before the game had suggested that the Malaysian pair tended to concede points in bunches when put under pressure and that’s exactly what the Indians did. A run of six straight points gave the Indians the 9-7 lead and although the Malaysians snapped that to equalise 9-9, it was the Indians who led all the way after that in that first game.
Contrary to their results in Thailand and Singapore, there was no easing up in game two either. Points were exchanged until 6-6 before the Indians went ahead decisively and kept pulling away.
Here to stay
Boe doesn’t take any credit for this. The crowd noise at Istora Senayan – which was hosting its final Indonesia Open – was through the roof and even if he had wanted to, Boe says he could not be heard by the two Indians. “I was sitting with (Pullela) Gopichand in the coaches’ corner and I think they may have heard a few words that I said but I think they were just being polite and nodding,” he says.
The celebrations capped a hard couple of months of success, mistakes and do-overs which ended in a triumph for the ages. | Photo Credit: AP
As they got their win, Chirag ripped his shirt off and the duo threw their racquets into the crowd. It seems as if their confidence – which had dipped after the two early losses earlier this month – is back.
Gopichand certainly thinks so.
“They might have some losses going forward, but Chirag and Satwik are a pair that is here to stay. They’ve shown that in this tournament. It’s not just the confidence of winning, but the confidence of knowing you could have done badly but you can make the changes to win again,” he says. “We have world Championships, Asian Games and of course the Olympics coming up. I don’t want to put pressure on them, but they are definitely one of the best in the world right now,” he says.
Doing the nation proud | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
That tag will undoubtedly have a target on their back in the tournaments to come. Boe believes they will be able to deal with the weight of those expectations going forward. “Everyone knows that Chirag and Satwik are one of the best pairs in the world. Everyone knows no one can rule us out. They know that if we bring our ‘A’ game, we are very hard to beat. Our job is to bring our ‘A’ game every time,” he says.
For now, Boe says, Chirag and Satwik can dial back the intensity. They can enjoy a good Sunday dinner and take a week’s break when they return to India on Monday. And then, they will get back to the grind that comes when you know you have a reputation not to live off but to defend. “We are going to get to work once again. We are going to stay humble and we are going to stay hungry,” he says.
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