If the Southeast Asian circuit of the BWF World Tour was anything to go by, PV Sindhu had no business reaching her second straight final of the world championships without having dropped a single game.
Sindhu played in three of the four tournaments in Southeast Asia – the Malaysia Open, Indonesia Open and Thailand Open – prior to the 2018 world championships in Nanjing. While her form in those tournaments was not that bad on paper – she made the semi-finals, quarter-finals and finals respectively – her defeats in each of those tournaments left a lot to be desired from her game, which was documented here.
However, with just two weeks between the Thailand Open and the world championships, Sindhu was able to make those modifications in her game that allowed her to beat three top-10 players on the way to the final.
In Nanjing, Sindhu was brilliant against her two Japanese nemeses – Nozomi Okuhara and Akane Yamaguchi – who have troubled her quite a few times in the last year. However, in the final on Sunday, the 23-year-old will be up against a completely different animal.
Lightning quick
Carolina Marin, like Sindhu, has been ruthless at these world championships. But for her semi-final match against China’s He Bingjiao, the Olympic champion has steamrolled her opponents in just over 30 minutes. Even against Bingjiao, Marin lost the first game but then completely bossed the next two to book a spot in her third world championship final.
Marin, like Sindhu, relies on her physical traits and aggression more than her technique. The 25-year-old is one of the fastest – if not the fastest – shuttlers in the world and can overwhelm her opponents with her pace, something world No 10 Saina Nehwal found out in the quarter-finals, losing to the Spaniard 6-21, 11-21 in just 31 minutes.
“[Marin’s] game was too quick for me to even think what to do next,” Nehwal admitted after the match. Sindhu and India’s chief national coach Pullela Gopichand would do well to learn from that match about how not to play against someone like Marin.
Apart from her speed, what has stood out in Marin’s game is her confidence on court, which, after a long time, looks to be back at the level that won her an Olympic gold two years ago. In Nanjing, she has been like a hurricane, tearing through her opponents and upping the decibel levels of her shrieks after winning points.
Her form is almost unbelievable considering the rather average first half of the season she had, where she failed to go past the semi-finals of any tournament apart from the European Championships, which she won.
Marin lost in the first round of the Indonesia Open last month to world No 17 Sayaka Sato. After that defeat, she took a three-week break until the world championships, in which she spent time trying to regain her mental toughness.
“It’s just something I really had to work on, so I kept the last three weeks for my mental game,” she told reporters after her semi-final win on Saturday. “I have shown this week that my mental game is back, so I am ready for everything now,” she added.
Be smart
Sindhu is likely to have done her homework prior to the final. One of the things that has worked for the Olympic silver medallist in this tournament is that she has played positively and taken the initiative in matches – rather than being passive like she had done a few times in this last year – and has made few unforced errors. She should look to do the same against Marin, but just being aggressive is probably not going to be enough.
Sindhu has to be smart and play tactically against Marin. “She has to try and dictate the match, keep it unpredictable, make sure Marin does not find her rhythm and that speed that she is comfortable playing in,” said former national champion Aparna Popat.
“She will have to break her movements. If Marin is moving forward in a particular direction and she knows where the shuttle is, she will get to the shuttle very quickly. So, you have to keep her guessing or change direction, or make her wait, change the serves, do something different,” Popat added.
Sindhu will also be a different type of opponent for Marin than the ones she has faced so far in Nanjing – Busanan Ongbamrungphan, Sato, Nehwal and Bingjiao. However, Marin hardly ever changes her strategy and just relies on her speedy, aggressive game most of the time.
If Sindhu plays smartly like she did in the Rio Olympics final, she would give herself the best chance to reverse the result and become the first Indian woman to win the badminton world championships.
The two shuttlers will be clashing for the 13th time in their international careers, with the spoils so far shared 6-6. Only a brave person would bet their hard-earned money on either of the two. Since that epic final in Rio, their last four meetings have all ended in straight games. But given the form the two are in, we could be in for another Sindhu-Marin classic in Nanjing.
Sindhu vs Marin will begin at around 1 pm IST and can be watched on Star Sports 2 in India.