How workmen interim coaches may help Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Chirag Shetty rebuild their aura

It really started to come undone, much before Paris, and not solely due to injuries, right there at the same place, the Shenzen Super 750 last year. Satwik-Chirag lost their first tournament final in 4 years there, at the China Masters at the fag end of the 2023 season. That loss to Chinese eventual Paris silver medallists Liang-Wang, didn’t so much dent their confidence, as scratch a wound that just didn’t mend itself, with opponents picking at the tiniest of lingering defects in their games. Two other finals defeats followed in shocking succession, and Paris ended up a tough spirit-numbing campaign.

Coach Mathias Boe has left. And on a strictly interim basis, India’s most consistent and highest achieving shuttlers of the last 5 years, find themselves in the care of Manu Attri and Sumeeth Reddy on the coaching bench. So, what can Satwik-Chirag learn from India’s 2016 men’s doubles Olympians, reunited, only because Sikki Reddy, Sumeeth’s partner in mixed doubles at the ongoing China Masters, was struck by illness? The bread & butter game of the ordinary folk, who cannot rain down attacks from a vantage.

So eternally comfortable with their towering attack, it is the low altitude fast, parallel game that Liang-Wang, Aaron-Soh and the Koreans prefer, that has proven to be the Indians’ undoing in the last 12 months. When rallies extend, and there’s no quick conclusions available through piercing smashes which all get retrieved, the Indians have had to accept dictated terms by opponents. They are no mugs at low defense, but in crucial moments ever since the 2023 World Championships when Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen got them acquainted with losing, dragging them into complicated left-right patterns, Satwik-Chirag had stumbled, unable to switch organically to the parallel style.

Truth be told, it’s a cumbersome, attritional style, and sucks the booming power and creative menace out of you. But the Indonesians have exploited it at the All Englands and right till the Olympics, the workman’s doubles pairing has cramped both talented Indians. What Manu Attri and Sumeeth, temporarily, would do, is view the game on their behalf like the non-altitude players do.

Reading those serves full of mischief, expanding the variety in shots to simply start finding creativity even in the speed-centric, mundane, parallel game, and bearing out the long passages, where the faux-lifts cannot be smothered with a smash, because they are sent sailing that way – it’s in these laborious tasks that Manu-Sumeeth, who never reached dizzy heights themselves, but read opponents accurately, can help them.

Satwik-Chirag have enough chutzpah to back themselves when cornered, and all the shots to turn the tide. But they can do with the help of Indian coaches, briefly till the foreigners arrive, by mastering the rhythm of the ordinary, parallel game. Mind you, it is ordinary only in bombastic power, not in guile or pace – where the layering happens. But it’s something the streetsmart Meerut shuttler Manu can help them demystify.

If you were to truly pinpoint the moment when doubts first crept up glaringly ahead of Paris – it was the World Championship in 2023. Satwik-Chirag have since beaten Astrup and Rasmussen, whom they play in the China Masters quarters on Friday. The Danes have tripped up Indians 6-3 in head-to-head – the pattern goes two wins for Danes, one for Indians, thrice over. And it’s got to do a little with how Indians, now ranked 9, can set traps on the back court for the third ranked Danes, after getting past their deceptive serves.

All the world is a score-settling stage for Satwik-Chirag at this point. It’s where a bit of eye-level fast exchange badminton, the sorts Manu copped to survive everyday and what coaches at Hyderabad humbly prepare wards for, can help. A solid, evenly shaped, blunt butter-knife, more than a killer’s blade is what’s needed.