Famous India vs China wins at the World Championships – The Indian Express
As Kidambi Srikanth gets ready to take on young upstart Li Shifeng of China in Round 2 of the Huelva World Championships, we look at three Indians who were engaged in top quality contests against the big Chinese names of the day.
Shifeng, a youth Olympics champ is fresh off his Thomas Cup exploits in semifinals, but Indian National coach P Gopichand reckons Srikanth has a quirky game and is moving well enough – not the easiest for Chinese to decipher.
Whipping the favourite with half-smashes
Chinese Luan Jin was the 1983 All England champion, and expected to go through to the final at the World Championships that year, but Prakash Padukone took him out much earlier, while winning India’s first bronze. But Padukone played a very clever game against the favourite in the quarters, to whip him 15-4, 15-3, an eye-popping scoreline against the defensive, returning machine at Copenhagen. “Prakash never allowed him to hit and controlled the shuttle very tightly, not giving him any opportunity to break free,” recalls Vimal Kumar. Tight at the net, deceptive clears to the back, Padukone would not allow him to come under the shuttle.
On another court, Indonesian whiz Icuk Sugiarto thrashed Morten Frost unexpectedly, to deny the great Dane a medal in that edition.
Padukone didn’t have a big smash, but he was quick to the net against the Chinese, dealing in the net-tumbles that so foxed the biggest Chinese of the day. “The punch clears and half smashes were so unexpected,” Vimal recalls.
Padukone’s biggest win against a Chinese though came against Han Jian, in the World Cup Finals, the 1981 equivalent of year-end World Tour Finals, making him the first Indian to win it in a 16-player best of the season, format at Kuala Lumpur. Dubbed the Alba World Cup, the scoreline was a magnificent 15-0, 18-16 rollercoaster against the Chinese.
How Yihan was tamed after 10 losses
The tall Chinese, the last from her country to win the World Championships in women’s singles in 2011, had always been a formidable opponent for Saina Nehwal who had managed wins against Shixian Wang, Lu Lan and even an occasional one against Xuerui Li in their prime between 2009-13. But for Nehwal, Yihan was a particular scourge. Tall, aggressive, accurate and fiendishly driven when playing the Indian, Yihan had denied Nehwal a place in the final at the London Olympics with a bruising loss-margin.
Nehwal had just one retirement to take points from against Yihan in 10 meetings.
Come 2015, and the script would turn on its head.
“I had started feeling that I’ll never be able to beat Yihan, and it’s difficult to explain just how badly it can play in your head. But you always tell yourself that you are a sportsperson and your bread-butter job is to fight challenges. I’ll never stop fighting.
It needed me to realise that I will need to learn good strokes to put her into trouble. You can be a World No 1 and still be aware that there’s everything left to do, so much to learn. That’s what trying to beat Yihan Wang taught me,” Saina had said back then.
For all her fierce shot-making, Yihan Wang actually caught Saina unawares with her flicks at the net, and her strong half smashes – all played at a whipping hand speed. The deception and speed of it more than power could throw Saina off till she started reading the Chinese ace’s game.
It took awhile, but when the wins came, they came three in a row. Saina had taken her to the decider at the Asian Games, but not crossed over to a win.
Starting with All England in 2015, Nehwal would get a hold on Yihan’s strokes, anticipate her wrist and then get into position to employ her own kills against the wilting knees. The trend would continue at the World Championships, where Saina would make her scurry front and back and front.
At the Worlds, Nehwal would hear the sweet sound of her plans falling in place.
“The last few times I had lost to Yihan Wang, I had made small but crucial errors in the last few points. But this time at the same stage, I had a few extraordinary rallies. At the All England, she’d not been moving well, so I won’t count that win as major. But here it was a bigger challenge as she was picking shuttles and retrieving everything. I just had to prolong the rallies. She had pulled out the second set, and it wasn’t easy at all being two points down at 16-18 in the decider. But I stayed relaxed. I usually rush at this stage and mess up, but I was very calm this time. I kept moving her around and could play the big shots at the crucial juncture which I’d never managed earlier,” Nehwal would explain happily later.
Giant amongst giant-killers
PV Sindhu’s body of work in her early successful years was the big wins against the Chinese – Shixian Wang, Yihan Wang and Xuerui Li all of whom she stubbed at the World Championships stage in 2013-14 when winning her two bronzes as a teenager.
The tall Indian never faced a problem of being out-hit by the Chinese who were all slowing down by that time, and found her too powerful to handle. Raw power in the strokes, a significant reach in retrieval, the future superstar was never going to be easy as she seriously challenged their lunging knees on all corners, as they caved in one after another.
Sindhu would literally land up at a World’s and go about dismissing the Chinese early in the draw, to kick up one right storm. A giant on a giant-killing spree would best describe how the Indian virtually ended Chinese domination of women’s singles, and stranglehold of the World’s title. Ten years and China’s still searching for the crown, with Chen Yufei missing from Spain die to a sprained ankle in practice.
PV meantime, is looking to win her second World title.
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