Lakshya Sen genial, icy cool, and polite on court, looked prepared to raise hell if he was going to be denied his stomp towards history at Port de la Chapelle on Friday. Having had to play one match more than everyone else in Paris and handed the toughest path to a medal, he had traveled too far to now back away.
The last man standing from the famously difficult Group L of the Paris Olympics and Indian badminton’s only remaining hope for a medal stood at the net, a set and 7-8 down in the second. He was eyeballing the chair umpire, stubbornly demanding to see a challenge review of a line shot by Chinese Taipei’s Chou Tien Chen on the giant screen. The shuttle had caught the line, and a fuming Lakshya Sen stood in denial of this 1-point lead ceded to Chen.
He lost his cool, growled walking back to his receiving position, and then the fuse exploded. It scrunched into those seconds of the standoff, just how badly he wanted this win. The pristine bloody-mindedness of a dream from age 8 gave him a 19-21, 21-15, 21-12 victory as he reached the Olympic semifinals, two matches away from a medal.
He had been fighting for every point, sending back outrageous, defensive retrieves and cross smashes with an audible punch, because the tall and tricky Chen was hammering returns away.
Between a panting heart and flared nostrils, Lakshya Sen found the composure to sneak in two net tumbles that were so precise and clinical, it was like striking a harp chord amidst a drummer’s cacophony. Clarity of shot-making, processing the next movement all the while hitting insane heart rates, was how he crescendoed a comeback. From 7-8 down, Lakshya Sen reached 10-10, with an angry cross smash. And then never relented, despite Chen’s own shot quality never dipping in any way.
Thrice, in the last few years, Lakshya Sen had been taken to a decider by Chen and finished tamely. Chen is a former Top 4, rangy and with endless control on carrying on with a rally. His smashes hit deep, and his net game isn’t brittle. But Lakshya Sen’s finishing in the second set — after he pushed the accelerator and refused to peg back the pace — made him the first Indian male to make Olympic semifinals.
P Kashyap and K Srikanth both had chances in quarterfinals but couldn’t finish. Lakshya Sen brokered no such thoughts of going down in a brutal, bruising, energy-sucking contest.
Pushing the pace of the rallies knowing he could tire the 34-year-old out came with risks. The Taiwanese loves the speedy game. What he wasn’t prepared for was Lakshya Sen hitting quality strokes at that enhanced pace. Exhaustion wasn’t the factor here, out-thinking Chen when exploding away was the test. From 11-11 in the second, Lakshya Sen went to 18-13 by continuously picking shuttles that came to his low backhand in the front corner and clears that looped high on the forehand at the back corner. He refused to blink in defense, but unlike all past years and tournaments and early exits, now Lakshya Sen’s attack had the punch and sting that comes from an unreal wrist whippy action, given he is one of the shortest of the Top 20 men.
Chen had kept a sedate pace and played body dashes in the opener to take it 21-19. In the second, Lakshya Sen refused to let him slow down. He was error-less on the net tumbles and threw himself around the court, running back, scurrying diagonal all the time striking the shuttle high. He wasn’t dawdling in defensive rallies in Paris this whole last week. Lakshya Sen was nailing more winners than he ever has in the past, as he raced to level the sets.
Lakshya Sen didn’t blink in snappy exchanges, he chased shuttles that were floating wide like a man possessed and he ran out of challenges. Taking off at 13-8 in the decider, he simply refused to allow Chen the final word, the last say. A bunch of ambitious Indian men have tried making headway at the Olympics but never could. Lakshya Sen went to Paris, refusing to fade away. “There’s lot more work to do. Now real test starts,” he said at the end. He’s not finished yet.
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