Whom

The most heartening aspect of India’s Thomas Cup team today was watching Chirag Shetty-Satwiksairaj Rankireddy beat Mohammad Ahsan-Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo. All the previous times that our boys have faced Kevin Sanjaya, they have lost 11-0. It was as individuals. Today, they had Team India backing their efforts, planning and rooting for them. It makes a difference, and this was a first where India played as a unit. Earlier, if Saina was playing, Sindhu wouldn’t be there. And if Sindhu played, Saina wasn’t around. If the doubles team played, the singles players weren’t really invested. This was truly Team India’s victory and I was so happy that Satwik-Chirag gave it back to the Indonesians.

In my mind, I knew this was possible when you do the calculations. But whether it will actually be possible depends on individual players, and today they pulled it off perfectly, which was wonderful to watch. When we speak of Indian team sport at the highest level, this is the real World Cup that India has won in a game spread globally and with fancied powerhouses. I am proud of being a badminton player today. This was coming for years, but things fell into place now. I might even believe in the magic of our players.

Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Denmark will be in shock tonight, wondering how India won. This will be reported for years. In Malaysia, they still recall stories of how they won a title in 1991 with the Sidek brothers, and they earned Datukhoods (similar to knighthoods) and acres of land. Legends were born. Mind you, the Indonesian and Malaysian teams, the moment they lost, are going to be wondering ‘Can I go back home?’. You’ll hear ‘change the coach, change the association’ calls in the aftermath. That’s how much the Thomas Cup means to those badminton-crazy nations. Coaches fear for their jobs, and players get shredded. If you had told half the guys in my association the day before that India is winning the Thomas Cup, even they wouldn’t believe it. But the players did.

In my time, we’ve lost 1-5 to Sri Lanka and 2-5 to Pakistan even. For us to qualify for the 16-team elite event used to be mighty, and when we beat Korea and Japan to qualify for that Thomas Cup and Uber Cup (for women) in 1999 Delhi, we thought that’s great. Both Prakash (Padukone) sir and I used to play both singles and doubles, we didn’t even have doubles specialists then. We would be given two Yonex T-shirts and we would be on our way to these events. So you can understand where we started and the enormity of this.

India’s depth has been outstanding. And if there were five more singles, India would have still won. You shouldn’t keep fretting about the big gold medal not coming in the Olympics, instead keep pushing in team events. Badminton Association of India, Sports Authority of India and the Government helped us in plans to push 10 players in Top 25 to build more depth. We didn’t build this depth in the women’s team. The women players would play their own matches and not care for the rest of the team. Saina and Sindhu didn’t take the team along, we should have built that culture in the Uber Cup. That’s the difference between bronze and gold.

This win comes from H S Prannoy and Kidambi Srikanth not taking their places for granted, also Srikanth and Lakshya Sen fighting for that one spot. But credit to the boys, they competed while helping each other. That’s a huge generous quality. They’ve each had debacles — lost at Olympics, not qualified for Olympics, not been centrestage, lost big matches. That fire to prove a point has baked them a little more, which showed in their grit.