The Korea Open Super Series triumph is what the bread and butter of sporting greatness is going to look like in coming years: not every title will be uplifting and emotionally charged, some will just upturn the last result.

PV Sindhu kept a surprisingly detached countenance soon after she beat Japanese rival Nozomi Okuhara 22-20, 11-21, 21-18 in what was a rematch of last month’s World Championship final. Sindhu proved a point but calmly refrained from rubbing it in the face of both her opponent as well as critics who were wondering about two second-place, silver-medal finishes — at the Olympics and the Worlds — in as many years.

Eighty three minutes of physically and mentally exhausting exchanges against an accomplished Japanese, the reigning World Champion, might have a lot to do with her eventual equanimity and visible lack of crowd-pleasing roaring antics that follow exultant victories. But coaches from the team are pointing at evidence of increased maturity in the 22-year-old who learnt some very tough lessons in the three weeks since the World Championship loss, and came back swiftly to reassert her dominance. That she is capable of doing this against any player currently on the circuit, means India is looking at a potential world beater as has never been seen over a long time in Indian sport.

Okuhara was subdued with minor tweaks to Sindhu’s game — corrections that coach Gopichand personally supervised right from the day after the duo returned from Glasgow.

“I was just going with the rallies. I didn’t think [about] anything [else] because I had to control the shuttle a lot. While controlling the shuttle, nothing came into my mind,” Sindhu would explain of the moment when she led 19-16 in the decider, talking to reporters in Seoul later. She had famously botched a 19-17 lead in Glasgow, and though she levelled at 20-all, lost the epic battle to two rushed points.

On Sunday, while becoming the first Indian to win the Korean crown, Sindhu would consciously hold her nerve, to not allow the Japanese a toehold into the door after leading 11-5 and 17-13 as well as 19-17 in the decider.

Patience pays
Coach Amrish Shinde who sat courtside noted the differences between the World Championship loss and the inverting win in Korea. “She was obviously following what Gopi and she have been working on strokes. It was her unhurried temperament, waiting patiently for her chance to kill the shuttle in those strokes that was different. She has the smash but today she was sharp in follow-up taps and pushes to get the winners. Even when the long rallies of the third set were taking a toll, her body language was good. Shoulders upright, same vigour. The expression on her face right after she won – calm and composed showed she’s matured a lot in these three weeks,” he said.

The highlight of the gladiatorial Glasgow battle had been a 73-shot rally that tested every sinew of both shuttlers, and popped a few worried veins of the audience. As sensational as that was — Sindhu won that point — some believe it took more out of Sindhu in the larger scheme of things. In Seoul — albeit with the cushioning of a first lead — Sindhu would approach Set 2 strategically, and not go wading into battle everytime Okuhara blew the bugle.

The idea was to keep rallies fast paced and snappy and though she would still win the longest exchange of the day at 18-16, a 56-shot rally, she could cede inches to win the miles. When the second set lead for Okuhara read 16-9, Sindhu would wisely catch her breath. “In the second game, everything was going out and I just couldn’t control the shuttle. If I wanted to recover points also, it was a huge lead,” she said.

She would rather nurse her set-up shots, work on openings and then pounce on the kills in a refreshed decider. “In the third she had to attack,” Gopichand said. “She had a few points lead and was sharp enough to get one more shuttle back. We worked on our mistakes in Glasgow,” he added.

Three Super Series — India, China and Korea — three World Championship medals, an Olympic silver and a host of other podiums means Sindhu has logged five years of headline making now. The Olympic-obsessed flyby cheering squad from Rio on social media might have moved onto other drum-beating causes and personalities. And new converts will get added next year when the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games throw up fresh names to devour, but PV Sindhu has nicely settled into the topmost echelon of an international sport, raising immense possibilities of global dominance. In Korea, she proved she was chipping away at whatever flaws that held her back from becoming India’s rare but bonafide world beater.

Info Source: The Indian Express