When Chennai welcomed and cheered for PV Sindhu just like it would a movie star

The crowd on the first day of Premier Badminton League’s Chennai leg, when Bengaluru Blasters took on North Eastern Warriors, wasn’t boast-worthy.

There was one fan who risked getting a sore throat, screaming at random intervals and pounding his two inflatable noisemaker sticks against each other for world No 1 Viktor Axelsen and Blasters. Him apart, no one went wild.

Good rallies were cheered but they didn’t bring the house down. The spectators were good but sparse. For perhaps the biggest badminton event in Chennai, the response on the opening day could have been better.

That evening, right outside the Jawaharlal Nehru indoor stadium, two men in blue lungis were applying glue paste on the wall. Posters being stuck on walls in Chennai usually signal the arrival of a film star’s movie release. But the posters in their hands featured an image of a fist-pumping, screaming PV Sindhu in a yellow skirt that she sported during the Rio Olympics final.

On Saturday, a few hundred meters away from the arena’s entrance, one could hear a growing roar. A group of latecomers rush in fearing they had missed Sindhu’s game. Outside, several flex boards welcoming Sindhu and Chennai Smashers have joined the posters. Inside, the arena feels very different than it did on Friday. For one, it’s full. And, almost everyone in it is shouting like the Axelsen fan as the home team, spearheaded by Sindhu, is introduced.

Smashers’ men’s doubles pair – Chris Adcock and Lee Yang – lose in straight games. This might end their semi-final hopes. But the spectators shriek in delight. Defeat doesn’t matter when the moment they’ve been awaiting finally arrives.

Sindhu steps on to the court to restore the balance in the tie, to prevent her team from getting into a precarious position, to beat world No 1 Tai Tzu Ying. Tai was unbeaten in the league prior to the match and had beaten Sindhu in all their three meetings last year, apart from leading 8-3 in the head-to-head stats. She had trounced Saina Nehwal in straight games in her previous tie.

For Sindhu, however, this is a new game at a new place being cheered by people, many of whom, are watching her live for the first time. Though Sindhu has been part of Chennai Smashers for three years, this is the first time PBL matches are being played in the Tamil Nadu capital.

Work can wait

Charted accountant Amit Iyer has plenty of work pending. He’s supposed to be with his team, working on tax calculations. But he’s here with his son watching Sindhu battle Tai Tzu Ying.

“I’ll leave as soon as Sindhu’s match is over,” he says “I don’t know if I can come again on Monday [for Smashers’ tie against Blasters].”

When told that Sindhu will be playing the evening’s mixed doubles event as well, he faces a dilemma. Tax calculations might have to be put on hold.

Senior members of his tribe, Sridhar, 65, and his badminton buddy Ravi Shankar, aren’t tensed by impending deadlines. They had missed Friday’s tie because of work. But on a weekend, when Sindhu’s taking the court in their city for the first time since her junior days, they don’t want to miss it.

“We try and watch all the games live... even the local matches here. We play everyday. Badminton, for us, is religion,” Sridhar chuckles.

“Well, nothing like that,” his friend politely denies, perhaps afraid that Sridhar’s exaggerating. “It’s just that we like watching the sport a lot. And a champion like PV Sindhu is playing.”

Why do they like Sindhu?

“Because she plays what I think she’ll play,” replies Sridhar after thinking briefly.

She starts the match with a long, loopy serve that Tai returns to the centre of the service line. A brief battle of drops at the net ensues. Sindhu finds the net while attempting a cross-court drop. Tai wins the point.

The next point, Tai first makes Sindhu bend with her drops, then arch back with her clearing shots. This clever mixing of shots and her solid defence did Sindhu in in their four previous meetings – three of them lasted only two games. But now, Sindhu’s fresh, fast and charged up by the crowd. She quickly leaps back to get hold of Tai’s clearing shot and smashes it cross-court, towards Tai’s right, at 314 kilometers per hour. Tai can’t touch it.

Sindhu makes unforced errors, but she evens them out with smashes. Tai’s super-deceptive. It might look like she’s driving the shuttle but it would fall short of the short service line. But on Saturday, she, too, makes unforced errors and pays for it by losing the first game 11-15.

Yellow flags get waved in clusters.

Tai is unflustered though. Her defence seems sharper in the second game. She defends most of Sindhu’s smashes. And, without much ado, she pockets the second game 15-10.

Double delight

The third is a thriller. It keeps oscillating till 12-12. Tai Tzu then skips backwards and gets into an awkward position to net a smash. 13-12. Sindhu screams. And, so do the 6,000-odd supporters gathered there. A net kill and an unforced error from Tai ends Sindhu’s four-match losing streak against her Taiwanese rival.

The crowd – including a eleventh grade student, who’s watching badminton live for the first time, a family that cut short its vacation to watch this match, a few members of the Chennai Super Kings Fan Club – got to see what it came to see. Her tie-clinching victory in the mixed doubles match with Sumeeth Reddy against Lee Chun Hei Reginald and Kamilla Rytter Juhl was, for them, a bonus.

It’s almost an hour after the tie’s over. It’s less than half an hour to midnight. The stadium’s empty except for a few PR professionals quickly emailing press releases. Outside, there’s a long line of people bordering the barricade that connects the players’ exit and the team bus. They all wait to get a glimpse of Sindhu at close quarters and if lucky, get an autograph or a selfie.

“She attracts a crowd wherever she goes,” says Prasad Mangipudi, the executive director of Sportzlive and Entertainment Pvt Ltd, the commercial partners of PBL.

In the post-match press conference, she’s asked if the adulation is hard to handle. It isn’t, she replies. After Rio, she says, she’s been used to this. That night in Brazil transformed her from one of India’s brightest badminton prospects to one of its biggest sporting superstars. She accepts it, respects it.

The kids in the crowd are called in for a photo session with Sindhu. Some of the older ones plead the bouncers to let them in. But the crowd’s too much and the team bus is about to leave.

It’s past midnight when the Chennai Smashers team bus drives past the posters and the banners that has an image of a fist-pumping, screaming PV Sindhu in a yellow skirt that she sported during the Rio Olympics final.