Indians upset world champs
16 January 2009
By Raphael Sachetat. Pix by BadmintonPhoto
In a day of upsets, India’s Jwala Gutta and V. Diju caused the biggest shock when they edged Indonesia’s best mixed doubles pair Nova Widianto/Lilyana Natsir, showing that India’s renaissance isn’t relying on Saina Nehwal’s shoulders only.
In another shocker, reigning Olympic and world champions Markis Kido and Hendra Setiawan were sent packing as well.
Apparently, the fate of a whole nation is not solely relying on the solid – yet young- shoulders of Saina Nehwal. It can also count on Jwala Gutta’s amazing eyes and V. Diju’s humble character. But most of all, on their talent.
The duo, paired together three years ago, enjoyed their greatest win ever, on Court 1 of the Olympic Stadium in Seoul, when facing no other than the double world champions and Olympic silver medalists.
Even if the first game clearly went to the top seeds from Indonesia, their Indian opponents found a way to get back into the game and slowly caught the right sprit and style of play to put the favourites under pressure.
“After the first game, we realised that they were playing a fast game, just as a lot of Asian pairs do. This is not our style of play and we had to break their rhythm and rely on soft touch and net play. This is what we, Indians, are good at,” analysed Jwala Gutta, after her match.
This way of seeing things not only worked in theory, but on court as well and the Indonesians were soon frustrated with a pace they are not used to playing, finding themselves in a position where Nova could hardly strike his usual fast drives while Lilyana found Jwala stronger at the net than her.
As frustration led to mistakes, the second game was won by the Indians. The third turned out to be a nightmare for Widianto and Natsir, who watched the score board move up one point after the other for their opponents without being able to score. Diju and Jwala were on for their career best win 10/21 – 21/16 – 21/9.
“We’ve had some good results in the past, especially last year, where we won the Bitburger Open and had some good wins against good pairs, but never such a top class pair. This is definitely a boost for us and it will bring us some confidence for the events to come, the All England and the Swiss Open,” said Diju, who doesn’t train on a daily basis with his partner as both are based in a different place in India (Calicut for him and Hyderabad for her).
“We practice together during events, and also, we usually have training camps before tournaments, like this time when we had a one-week camp before the Super Series with our coach P. Gopichand.”
The pair will now take on another Indonesian pair, Wijaya Rendra/Meiliana Jauhari, representing their club of Djarum, while the favourites are now Lee Yong Dae and Lee Hyo Jung, who had the welcome of movie stars from the spectators for their quick win over Delbo Larsen and Mie Schjoett- Kristensen.
The title holders will now play Fran Kurniawan/Shendy Puspa Irawati. The other two quarters will feature Joachim Fischer-Nielsen/Christinna Pedersen Vs Songphon Anugritayawon/Kunchala Voravihitchaikul of Thailand and Robert Blair/Imoggen Bankier Vs Yohan Hadikusumo Wiratama/Chau Hoi Wah.
The fate of the top seeds in the mixed was not the only bad news for Indonesia as the Olympic champions in the men’s doubles were to be sent packing as well.
Markis Kido and Hendra Setiawan, still not at their best, went down to an inspired team of Fang Chieh Min/Lee Sheng Mu of Chinese Taipei. The first two games were uneven, with one game a piece, but the decider was a great one, with a clear contrast in styles.
The match point was a good sum up of what had been going on all through out the match when the Indonesians kept hitting down the shuttles, retrieved by Fang and Lee, before Kido nailed a huge smash into the net in frustration, leading to a 21/10 – 11/21 – 21/18 win for the Chinese Taipei boys.
The men’s doubles was very exciting with other very tight matches. Lee Wan Wah/Choong Tan Fook, the now independent Malaysians, scooped an important win over last week’s finalists Hendra Gunawan and Alven Yulianto.
The third game especially was thrilling, with Lee and Choong way ahead – 18/11 before Gunawan and Yulianto got back into the match, reminding their opponents of their old demons – leading and then collapsing towards the end.
But this time, when the Indonesians leveled up at 19/19, the Malaysians played a solid game and didn’t let go with an important victory and sealed their win which sent them into the quarter finals, where they are to meet Fang and Lee.
Malaysia’s former stars Chew Chun Eng/Chan Chong Ming didn’t have the same luck as they went down to youngsters Han Sang Hoon and Shin Baek Choel from Korea, in the last match of the day. It wasn’t the least in terms of suspense and the good crowd who had come to watch Lee Yong Dae stayed few more minutes to enjoy the win of this new pair in three games as well this time, 22/20 in the last game. Other seeds, however, made it through to the next round.
Of all the seeds involved in the men’s singles, only Joachim Persson failed to make it to the quarter finals. The clash awaited between him and his compatriot Peter Gade will probably have to wait until the Danish National Championships as the left hander was shown the way out by Korea’s Shon Wan Ho.
The 5th seed Dane was clearly not at his best while his opponent was all fired up by his home supporters and won thanks to a very fast game. In straight games, it was all over with an unquestionable success 21/14 – 21/13 for Shon, who will meet next a player he has probably seen on TV much more than in real life : Peter Gade himself, who hardly broke sweat to beat Ng Wei, 21/10 – 21/10.
The men’s single event saw only one match which went three games when Poland’s Przemyslaw Wacha took on India’s Arvind Bhat. The Pole finally ended up as a winner after an incredible finish.
Ahead 19/13, Wacha lost 6 straight points but saved one match point at 20/21 before closing it up 23/21. A relief which saw him throw his racket in joy… and got him a yellow card – he probably enters the circle of the very few players who got such a warning for celebrating – even if this gesture could have been seen as a sign of despair.
Lee Chong Wei will meet Park Sung Hwan in the quarters, while the bottom quarter will feature an all Indonesian affair between Simon Santoso and Andre Tedjono.
Adrianti Firdasari avenged the fate of her mixed double compatriots when she beat Saina Nehwal to get back at India in the closest match of the women’s singles. The Indonesian beat Nehwal 21/18 – 21/18 – 21/12 and will meet Tine Rasmussen in the quarters.
Wang Chen and Zhou Mi as expected, came through their second rounds even if Wang dropped a game under way to Malaysia’s Julia Wong. They will meet Petya Nedelcheva and Hwang Hye Youn respectively, while Pi Hongyan takes on the younger shuttler left in the draw, Japan’s Mayu Sekiya.
No surprise whatsoever in the women’s doubles, where some of the pairs didn’t even have to play to enter the quarter finals – Yang Wei/Zhang Jiewen, Ha Jung Eun/Kim Jung Min and Eom Hye Won/Jung Kyung Eun benefited walkovers from their opponents, which made the schedule of the day finish right on time for the usual draw to start, with rackets to be won for the spectators – a tradition in the Yonex Korea Open.
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