Nagpur: There wouldn’t be too many badminton players in the world who would be able to boast of coming back from a seven-point deficit in the deciding game of a match and go on to win. At just 16 years of age, Malvika Bansod pulled it off in perhaps the biggest match of her career yet.
Playing in her first ever senior national championships, Bansod was trailing 7-14 against 18-year-old Ashmita Chaliha in the fourth round on Sunday. On her home turf in Nagpur, she had had the support of the crowd for a majority of the match, before Chaliha opened up a seven-point lead and quietened the spectators.
Even the most optimistic person in the gallery of the Nagpur Divisional Sports Complex would not have predicted what would happen next, as the local girl went on an incredible streak of 10 straight points to turn the tables on her opponent. Bansod won the match 21-16, 16-21, 21-18 to reach the pre-quarterfinals in her first ever senior Nationals.
Asked how she had managed to pull it off, Bansod said she just kept her calm and made sure she did not panic. “I just told myself to go one step at a time, one point at a time, and I managed to do it,” she said.
And it wasn’t the first time she had done it either. At the All-India Junior Ranking Tournament in Chennai in August, Bansod was playing Chaliha in the final and the match had gone into three games there as well. “I was trailing 11-6 there too but I managed to win the final game 21-13,” she said. “The experience of playing that match helped me today.”
Bansod’s photo is bound to splashed across the back pages of Nagpur’s local newspapers on Monday, what with the flurry of journalists who ran behind her for a quote following Sunday’s win. And if reaching the round of 16 in her first ever senior Nationals wasn’t a big enough achievement, she now has a chance of squaring off against PV Sindhu in the quarter-finals.
“I’m really happy to reach the pre-quarters and it would be a dream come true to play against Sindhu,” said Bansod, who is also the youngest in the draw. But first, she will have to get past India’s second-ranked senior, Shreyanshi Pardeshi, who is also in a good run of form.
Bansod has never played against Pardeshi before, and the 19-year-old from Indore will also be a lot fresher considering she had secured a direct entry into the pre-quarters on the basis of her India ranking.
Bansod will be up against it on Monday, but she is also bound to be motivated with only one hurdle left between her and a dream meeting with India’s most popular and successful shuttler, assuming of course that Sindhu herself makes it past Revati Devasthale in the round of 16.