There was no plan for the dance.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty had just won their maiden China Masters title on Sunday, coming from a game down to beat He Ji Ting and Ren Xiang Yu in Shenzhen, and the familiar celebration followed. Satwik danced. The pair soaked in the moment.
“It just happens in the moment,” Satwik said. “It’s kind of a tradition for us. We just want to keep that tradition going.”
Perhaps that is also how Satwik and Chirag would like to approach the Asian Games. Without overthinking it. Without carrying the weight of what is expected of them. Without turning every match into a referendum on whether the defending champions are good enough to defend their crown.
Three years after winning gold in Hangzhou, the pair will arrive at the Asian Games in Nagoya with a title behind them and, more importantly, a little more clarity about themselves.
“We just want to go out there and have as much fun as we normally do on a badminton court,” Chirag said. “If we are able to do that, I think we’ll be able to go deep into the tournament. That’s the only thing we want to do, not really think too much about the results.”
It sounds simple. For a pair that has spent much of the past few years dealing with injuries, interruptions and the expectations that come with being India’s leading men’s doubles team, it has taken some work to arrive at that simplicity.
Their coach Tan Kim Her has seen the other side of it. Earlier this year, when the pair were struggling to find their rhythm, he felt there was a mental block. They were training well, but the results were not coming. Injuries kept interrupting their progress, making it difficult to build any continuity.
Sometimes, Tan felt, the pressure came from the pair themselves. The lesson was not to eliminate pressure altogether, but to learn how to handle it.
That may be the biggest change in their approach to this Asian Games. They are not claiming to be immune to expectations. They are trying not to add to them themselves.
They will be defending champions. They know opponents will prepare specifically for them. They know they will be among the pairs expected to challenge for gold. But Chirag does not want to accept the idea that they are somehow the inevitable pair to beat.
“There are plenty of other good players as well,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that we have some added pressure of any sort.”
LEAVING PRESSURE BEHIND
Tan has spoken about how the pair could sometimes get caught up in the thought of “You have to win. You have to win.” The Olympics had provided another example of how expectations can become a burden.
Now, Chirag is talking about doing almost the opposite.
“When we are able to keep the results aside and take one match at a time, I think we do really well,” he said.
That attitude is easier to understand after what happened in China. The China Masters was not just another title on their resume. It was a physical examination after a difficult few months.
Satwik had been dealing with a shoulder issue, while the pair had gone into the World Championships with very little competitive rhythm. Their campaign ended in the quarterfinals, and they had not looked physically settled.
China gave them a chance to test that again.
They played five matches, four of them going to three games, spending more than five hours on court during the tournament. Satwik admitted they had gone to Shenzhen without knowing exactly how their bodies would respond across a full week.
“We weren’t sure in the China Masters how much we could cope with the body throughout the week,” he said. “So we were just taking one match at a time.”
By the end of it, the uncertainty had eased.
“Overall, it was pretty comfortable throughout the week. That’s a good sign going ahead.”
Chirag felt the contrast even more sharply. At the World Championships, they had returned to competition after almost three months and had little time to build into the tournament before facing a tough Chinese pair in the quarterfinals. Their bodies had not coped as well as they would have liked.
In China, the repeated three-game matches became almost a test of whether they were ready for what was coming next.
“The body feels a lot better than it was at the World Championships,” Chirag said. “We got another week of practice going towards the China Masters, and I think that really helped us to do well at the China Masters.”
For Satwik, continuity has become important. Their rhythm has repeatedly been broken by injury, and every interruption has meant starting again.
“For me and Chirag, we need that continuity of playing,” he said. “If you do get a break, I think it will take time to get back to practice, get back to the speed, adjust the defence and everything.”
The China Masters, then, gave them something more valuable than a trophy. It gave them evidence that their bodies could withstand the demands of a tournament that resembled what awaits them at the Asian Games, where the team event will be followed by the individual competition.
“Whoever is fit enough to play 10 days, I think they will kind of win the tournament,” Satwik said. “So it’s more tactical, strategic and physical.”
LESSON FROM HANGZHOU
There is also a lesson from Hangzhou that they want to carry with them. They were not defending anything then. They were trying to win the Asian Games for the first time. Yet even after difficult moments during those 10 days, they managed to keep going.
“The only thing that we had with us was hope,” Chirag recalled. “We just wanted to go out there and give it our best every single day on court, and eventually it worked out really well for us.”
Three years later, the circumstances are different, but the pair want to return to the same basic principle. Give their best each day. Prepare properly. Take one match at a time. And, perhaps most importantly, enjoy themselves.
Their game is evolving too. Satwik spoke about the importance of continuity, but the pair are also conscious that remaining at the top means giving opponents something new to think about. Chirag pointed to Satwik’s improved service follow-up game in China, where opponents repeatedly challenged him after his serve only to find him catching shots he might previously have left for his partner.
“As athletes, you keep evolving your game,” Chirag said. “When you are able to do that, you keep your opponents guessing because they don’t really know what’s going to hit them.”
It is a useful parallel to their approach to pressure. They cannot control what opponents bring to the court, just as they cannot control what people expect from them. What they can control is how they respond.
And perhaps that is why the China Masters win came at the right time.
It followed the disappointment of the World Championships. It came after another interruption to their rhythm. It tested their bodies over five demanding matches. In the final, they lost the opening game before settling down, sticking to their plans and winning the next two.
They did not have to force the comeback. They had to trust themselves long enough to let it happen.
That is increasingly the philosophy they seem to be taking with them to Nagoya. There will be pressure. There will be expectations. There will be opponents who arrive with nothing to lose. There will be days when things do not go according to plan.
But Satwik and Chirag have spent the last few years learning that the answer is not to demand a win from themselves before they have even stepped on court. It is to play, to trust and, this time, to have some fun along the way.
For a partnership that has now lasted a decade, perhaps that is not a bad way to approach another Asian Games together.
– Ends
