Boe Mathias, the Danish coach who guided Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty to the number two spot in the world rankings, is deserving of a Bharat Ratna, nothing less.
Boe has successfully led his wards dangerously near to that elusive number one position in the world of badminton, particularly in the event of men’s doubles, which pushes human capacity to its absolute limit.
But the amazing triumphs of our dynamic combination of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, and how they destroyed the finest of oppositions—for instance, how they defeated the top-ranked pairs in the Korean Open last week to win the title—are not the subject of this piece. This article discusses how doubles competitions have piqued the interest of badminton spectators and young aspiring shuttlers worldwide, as well as how the Badminton Association of India (BAI) has historically regarded the activity and its participants.
Leroy D’Sa, the country’s dominant men’s doubles player who achieved legendary status by winning seven national championship titles over the course of a stellar career when the national championships served as the only yardstick for measuring a shuttler’s prowess, is a huge fan of Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty.
“These youngsters, by their achievements on the circuit, have boldly pushed men’s doubles successes out of the spotlight. They are rightfully receiving praise and admiration from the nation, he remarked.
And they are the current stars. Sanjay, you represented India in our era as well as your own at the highest level on the worldwide stage, even after we had defeated world-renowned athletes to win honors and respect for the nation but received little recognition.
Another development is that new, aspiring players are switching to doubles as their specialty. This bodes well for the nation since we will soon have high-quality, abundant raw materials for the future, he said.
The doubles competitions have traditionally been regarded as the singles’ inferior and distant relatives.
For a while, the BAI chose national teams for international competitions based on singles results. Despite the fact that the majority of the top team championship competitions in the world featured a format of three doubles and two singles, this was the case. The Sudirman Cup has a doubles tournament in addition to the Thomas and Uber Cups, CWG and Asian team championships.
However, the BAI in those days did not give a damn about such politeness and happily continued with their idea of badminton.
So let’s see how the doubles titans did in the national championships. Leroy dominated the competition and won seven championships.Romen Ghosh, Nandu Natekar, and Jessel Ismai each won five medals.Partho Ganguly won 4 championships.
There were several well-known figures on the women’s side.Ami Ghia has seven wins under her belt thanks to her elegant and delicate strokes, while Jwala Gutta earned an astounding 14 titles. But Madhumita Bisht has won an incredible 20 mixed doubles championships and nine women’s doubles crowns.
However, Prakash Padukone is the one who is praised and spoken about for his record nine singles victories. Another factor in the concealment of duplicates is the media. They weren’t as enthusiastic and focused while covering doubles tournaments. They expertly and thoroughly dissected singles matches, but doubles was always the aftermath.
In reality, much of the doubles coverage consisted of just summarizing the results at the conclusion of the article. The BAI also exclusively discussed the singles.
The ministry of sports was also at fault. Dinesh Khanna, a former Asian and national champion, once related an incident to me that demonstrated how the government also paid little attention to doubles and its practitioners.
The national team was on the road for a significant team competition in an international tournament. However, the BAI only chose a team of four individuals. The duty of determining if there was a possibility to add one person to the squad fell to Dinesh, a player from Delhi.
Government Babu, who was in charge of badminton, informed Dinesh straight out that no player may join the squad.
Why do you need four of you when there are already more players? You may form two couples and participate in the event.
He was obviously unaware of the demands placed on the squad and/or players.
Romen Ghosh, a five-time national champion in men’s doubles and another legend in the sport, offers one remark.”The teams were chosen based on singles play during my time. Long-term relationships were thus impossible to establish. The choice of partners was left up to the team’s senior player. As a result, we often had scratch combinations to play. We had singles shuttlers playing doubles while the other nations had doubles experts. Now that things have changed, guys like Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty are able to provide these fantastic outcomes for us. They have worked marvels and altered our previous fruitless behavior. Singles have been given less priority. Parents are also okay with their kid specializing in doubles since the sport receives a lot of media attention and offers the possibility of a lucrative career.
Rankireddy and Chirag won the Korean Open, and I asked Boe if they would still have the will to succeed and how long they could maintain their dominance.
Oh, that’s up to them to remain at the top. They still have a long way to go in their careers and are still fairly young. Let me say this about their desire for achievement: “They have recently experienced great success, have tasted it, and liked it.”
We definitely certainly hope so.
