New Delhi: Before Lakshya Sen took the court against Collins Valentine Filimon of Austria in his first-round match at the BWF World Championships here on Tuesday, some of the big names of world badminton had found the court conditions tricky. The talk centered on how quickly one could adapt to the wobbling shuttle at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium here.
The slow conditions, with sideways drift in the big arena, challenged every shuttler. Those quick to grip the airflow and perfect their stroke timing flourished, while early risk-takers either committed errors or gave opponents loose shuttles to attack. But until the middle of the second game, when he finally got a hold of the conditions, the home crowd grew impatient. He lacked control, his smashes weren’t working, and he couldn’t open the court enough to play his attacking game. Filimon, ranked 128th in the world, showed patience and kept the pressure on the 14th-seeded home favourite. He cruised through the rest of it in no time, peppering Filimon’s court with winner after winner.
Lakshya, too, took his time and lost the first game 16-21 before pulling off a 16-21, 21-8, 21-4 victory. With the scores level at 7-7 in the second game, Lakshya started hitting the shuttle from the sweet spot of his racquet, and from that point on he completely took over the match. The line was drawn on Monday itself: bring out your attacks only after once you get the timing right from both sides of the court.
So in the second game, I tried to open up the court a bit more. I hit a few lifts in the rallies and then I was able to play my shots. Otherwise, in the first set, there were a lot of errors.
Because he’s tall and he can easily tackle those shots, “When I was going for drives in the first set, I wasn’t getting any point.
The game plan was a bit different, but I changed a few things in the second and third sets,” said Lakshya.
