Express News Service
CHENNAI: What changed between some of the previous matches against the Malaysians and Sunday? The strategy was the same but the Indian pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty executed it to perfection.
And after winning three titles since March, ‘I don’t think any country can rule us out’. Those were the words of Mathias Boe, the coach who continues to chisel, polish and fine-tune Rankireddy and Shetty’s games. Hours after witnessing his wards win a Super 1000 title for the first time, the Dane spoke about the win, why these wins comes with responsibilities, the desire to remain hungry and how they celebrated.
Thoughts on the title
Really happy that they can win such a massive title, winning the Indonesia Open… especially the men’s doubles, it’s not easy. I’m really proud of the boys, how they played throughout this week. The win today (Sunday) and, also, the win in the quarterfinal (Friday) against the World No 1 (pair of Muhammad Ardianto and Fajar Alfian). That was very impressive.
On the 0-8 (the Indian pair had a 0-8 win-loss record against Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik) and the strategy
The strategy today (Sunday) was how I had planned it. A few of the other times also… we know we have a very strong attack and of course we can score points from the attack. We had to stay aggressive in the service situation and see if we can get the attack out of that. If that didn’t succeed, then we had to trust the defence and lift high and be ready in the defence which we did really well. We didn’t win all the rallies obviously from the defence but at least some of the points we managed to score from… from the defensive positions. That was really good. They kept getting extra shuttles over the net and that forced the Malaysians into mistakes… some of the other times we played them, they (Rankireddy and Shetty) were a little desperate after a few attacks and were forced into a mistake. This time they were putting shuttles back constantly so the Malaysians were the ones who were forced into the mistakes. Obviously, that was really good.
On if the pair have moved from being pretenders to contenders
They are contenders for all the major titles. They have won the Swiss Open, Asian Champs back-to-back and now this… I don’t think any country can rule us out if we play well. These titles also come with some responsibilities. Nobody is going to give us anything. Everyone knows that it is difficult playing us. If we use this in the right way, it can be our advantage. If we use this in the wrong way, it can be a disadvantage. But, yeah, of course they are contenders with the way they are playing right now. That’s just a super situation to be in. We will try to make the most of it and stay hungry.
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