Watching Saina Nehwal play in Denmark

Saina Nehwal (File photo)

It was another day in the life of Saina Nehwal, badminton star in India.

It was a disappointing day. But she has experienced the bitterness of defeat before. She will seek to feed on it; will try to convert the anger into extra muscle during training, or smash with harder sting during practice.

For the moment, though, she will try to overcome the unsettling feeling of not being the defending champion at the Denmark Open. It’s been a year since she last won a major title.

Some defeats perhaps hurt more than others; a few might even be special. Yesterday’s was a plain defeat; there wasn’t anything heroic about it to feel good about later. Perhaps it was because this was the first match of the day and the audience was still trickling in. If it was held later, when the arena was packed, Saina might have expected to fly on the energy of the crowd.

She is favourite to win when she walks in for the quarterfinal against Korea’s Sung Ji Hyun. The Korean might not evoke the same respect in India that China’s famous Chinese opponents do, but at this level, they’re all a handful. Sung looks about a foot taller than Saina, and her height and reach can be unsettling.

Like two boxers jabbing at the start of the match to size each other up, Saina and Sung toss deep. It is basic badminton – they will punctuate the tosses with the odd slice or half-smash, not expending themselves so early. It’s going to be a slow match.

From midway in the first game, Saina works her way past Sung. What aids her is not her strokeplay but her relentlessness. Sung must deal with a wall of some sort that keeps sending the shuttle back. Under such pressure, the final error will come. Saina takes the first game.

This is a small hall – it can barely seat 3,000 people. The gallery is so close you could touch the players as they walk past. You can hear every sigh, see every drop of sweat. The organisers like the word ‘intimacy’; they think it adds value to the event. It’s better, they say, to have a packed 3,000-seater hall than book a larger hall where empty seats will be conspicuous and spectators removed from the immediacy of the action.

The Danish audience is polite. It’s a mixed crowd of middle-aged and younger folk, and they are likely to get loud when a Danish player takes the court, but there’s no barracking. Morten Frost, the legendary winner of four All England titles and a seven-time Denmark Open winner, walks in and occupies a seat close to Saina’s court.

The two players have started finding their range. Sung is able to get under the shuttle and put her weight behind her strokes. It’s a physical fight with the shuttle as a medium. The match swings a bit to the Korean, and then to the Indian. It’s like it is balanced on a scale, and subtle changes in weight swing it either way. Saina’s smash too has started ‘cooking’. There’s a raspy sound as the racket connects the shuttle and it homes in on its intended target. The sound is a giveaway for how well she’s playing. When she’s off rhythm, the sound is always flatter.

The Korean hangs on. What troubles Saina is that her winning shots are coming back because her opponent has such a long reach. Taller opponents are not always better, of course. It’s just that, ability being equal, reach will become a determining factor. Saina judges a toss wrongly at the baseline and the second game goes to Sung Ji Hyun.

The third game is a dogfight all the way. Both Saina and Sung swing more freely, exploring angles and spaces; drop shots, cross net shots; clips and half-smashes. Saina has such a limited range of strokes; she has to make up with her athleticism and sheer will. She’s also been uncharacteristically erratic on a few rallies. Points are neck-and-neck until 19. It is anyone’s game. The Indian makes a fatal error as she smashes long to give her opponent match point. One rally later, it is over. She is out of the tournament.

Backstage, where all the opposing troops gather before and after a match, she stares blankly. She fiddles with her phone. The physio helps relieve her muscles. She is probably struggling for answers. She didn’t play all that badly, but she wasn’t at her best either. Less than perfect is not an option at this level.