Having lost to Chen Long thrice before, HS Prannoy went into the Indonesia Superseries Premier quarterfinals with a simple game plan of frustrating his opponent by keeping the shuttle longer in play.
The plan worked wonders as the 24-year-old made the most of the tricky conditions and slow shuttles to upset the World and Olympic champion 21-18, 16-21, 21-19 in a gruelling 75-minute encounter to reach his maiden Superseries semi-final.
The win came on the back of a comfortable win on Thursday over defending champion Lee Chong Wei in the earlier round, which Prannoy himself admitted wasn’t one of his top notch victories simply because the opponent wasn’t at his best.
But on Friday, Prannoy had to dig deep into all his reserve against Long as both the players engaged in long rallies and more often than not, it was the Indian who stood tall at the end of those exchanges.
“The conditions were difficult as there was a lot of drift and shuttles were slow. So the simple game plan was to really hang in there and put pressure on him by ensuring that I was going to send every shuttle back in play,” Prannoy told The Field after the win.
“When he was leading 7-4 in the decider, I was talking to myself and thinking that if I could close the gap and go into the break at 11-9 or 11-8 then I have a good chance to turn the tables. And after I caught up at 17-17, I knew that I was physically really sound to go for the kill,” the 2014 Indonesia Masters champion said.
It also helped that Prannoy, who was promoted to the main draw of the tournament at the last minute, was relatively fresh to play a long drawn encounter. He said that the four-to-five weeks of hard work he put in training after recovering from the back trouble that kept him away from the game, helped him in the decider.
The world No 25 had been out of action since the Badminton Asia Championship in April and had been working on his fitness and insists that he was just raring to go out and play in Indonesia. “After training for four-to-five weeks, my body was raring to go. I was also feeling mentally fresh going to the tournament. I had this feeling after a long time and I am very happy with the way I am playing,” he added.
With K Srikanth also reaching the semifinals, Prannoy is also aware of the possibility of an all-Indian summit clash in Jakarta, but the 24-year-old knows the importance of staying focused on the job at hand and doesn’t want to look beyond Saturday’s last four encounter against qualifier Kazumasa Sakai of Japan, who defeated Rajiv Ouseph 13-21, 21-16, 21-10.
