Swastiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty’s win more a success story than glory

The success came at a much more fundamental level and the title win, which had looked just a matter of time for months now, is just a byproduct of it. It was only three years back in 2016 when Malaysian coach Tan Kim Her decided to sever the duo’s ties with their respective partners back then to club them together. And while many on the domestic circuit admitted to the players’ unbridled potential, none envisioned how they successful they could become by buoying each other’s weaknesses.

“One of us had to change and become a net player and I was the one because Satwik had a very good smash. I thought a lot (about pairing with Rankireddy) when we started off. But gradually we started playing well and the thought didn’t strike,” said Shetty, in an interview with HT.

“His earlier partners would create openings for him at the net. Now he had to do that for Satwik. Being a six-footer, more than a foot above the net, Chirag had to learn to crouch a lot to see the shuttle better and stay close to the net. He could make the changes because he was exceptionally talented,” says Pawar.

The sport of badminton, especially the doubles, requires intricate qualities in meticulous details and is quite paradoxical in that way given how much of soft skill is required for a game that exclusively demands brute smashers. It is also quite intriguing that a sport involving shuttlecocks, which are primarily made up of goose or duck feathers, is the fifth-fastest sport in the world after Drag Racing, Speed Skiing, Skydiving, and Formula One.

However, the small wins here and there did nothing to level them up and the losing streak continued with the duo winning nothing much of consequence in that entire year, with the next year going hopeless again. Apart from the Hyderabad Open title, which was an international event but with many Indian domestic players, the men’s doubles pair were reduced to mere participants in most others in 2018.

Ranki returned in April and the duo quickly announced a statement by winning the Brazil International Challenge title. But, as much as that win seemed like a breath of fresh air for the Indian fans, the jinx wasn’t really broken for they entered the old loop almost immediately – bowing out in the semis of Denmark Challenge, being on the losing side of India’s dismal Sudirman Cup campaign, getting ousted in the pre-quarters of the Australian Open and Indonesia Open, and the quarter-finals of the Japan Open too - before Thailand happened.

With PV Sindhu still getting the jitters on the knockout stages, Kidambi Srikanth struggling with his perennially poor form, and Saina Nehwal struggling with her fitness, hardly anyone bothered to follow the Super 500 tournament after Srikanth and Nehwal were both eliminated in the pre-quarters. And it is exactly here that the men’s pair of Rankireddy and Shetty kept going when every other member in the contingent were already looking at the World Championships.

Though experts were quick to point out the soft adjustments that the duo made in their game for the tournament, and the different mentality that they brought to the table, this was a sheer product of persistence against continuous failure and criticism. For, as Ray Kroc always believed - Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent won’t. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius won’t. Unrewarded genius is practically a cliché. Education won’t. The world is full of educated fools. Persistence and determination alone are all-powerful.