Lakshya Sen, one of India’s brightest young badminton prospects, will play arguably the biggest match of his fledgling career as a senior when he takes on the legendary Chinese shuttler Lin Dan in the pre-quarterfinals of the New Zealand Open Super 300 tournament on Thursday.
The 16-year-old Sen won his opening-round match in Auckland in straight games against Malaysia’s June Wei Cheam on Wednesday. Sen bagged the first game quite easily 21-11 and had a 17-8 lead in the second, before he got a bit impatient and conceded eight of the next nine points to allow the Malaysian to close down the gap to 18-16.
Sen eventually won the next three points to seal the match but he’ll know what to guard himself against when he takes on the two-time Olympic champion on Thursday. Sen loves to attack and prefers to finish rallies off early but the conditions at the North Shore Events Centre in Auckland aren’t very conducive to his game. “The courts are slow, so finishing the rally is not easy,” said Sen’s coach Sagar Chopda from the Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy.
Coincidentally, Lin Dan also used to have a similar attacking style of play in his heyday when he used to rack up titles for fun. But with age, the Chinese has mellowed down and adopted a more patient approach.
Sen, who is less than half of Lin Dan’s age (34), has nothing to lose in the match and is likely to just go out and play his natural game. The teenager understandably did not want to talk about the clash but admitted he was looking forward to playing the five-time world champion.
Sen is playing only his third tournament this year after recovering from a shoulder injury that he carried through the last few months of 2017. In a year in which he made the transition from the junior to senior circuit, Sen won two Series-level tournaments in Hyderabad and Bulgaria, before reaching the final of the Tata Open International Challenge in Mumbai in December.
“I injured my shoulder last year but it was not so serious, so I continued to play till the end of the year,” Sen said. “After the season ended, my doctor suggested I give the shoulder a rest, which is why I did not play a tournament till the Osaka Challenge in April.”
The time away from the circuit also saw Sen’s senior world ranking drop from the eighties in November to 111 before he played in Osaka. The youngster from Uttarakhand lost in the Round of 16 and then went out in the first round at the Indonesia Series the following week. He then went back to training for a couple of weeks before the New Zealand Open.
“My shoulder is fine now and I’m fully fit,” Sen said. Ahead of a match against arguably the greatest badminton player of all time, that can only be a good thing.