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Silver lining in gloomy campaign
RIO DE JANEIRO: Sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men run into a kind of fortitude that forces even the Gods to change the script, lean the way of the audacious.
RIO DE JANEIRO: Sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men run into a kind of fortitude that forces even the Gods to change the script, lean the way of the audacious. And in the process break the hearts of a billion.
Eighty three minutes of the most ardently followed badminton match in the history of India yielded a verdict that we don’t like. But the same time allowed us as a nation to revel in the glory that comes from excelling at an Olympic sport. PV Sindhu’s medal was tinged silver when Carolina Marin’s courageous, high-risk game-plan bore her to a 19-21, 21-12, 21-15 victory. In defeat Sindhu stays a champion for she fought with the kind of courage we seldom see from our sportspeople on the global stage.
This is a new generation of players from India. This is a generation that is not satisfied with just competing. Hell, it isn’t even satisfied with silver. Second-best has been acceptable to India for far too long. Sindhu on Friday showed that is no longer the case. After all she had the silver in hand even before the match began. She refused to be content and gave her all, though it wasn’t enough.
GRITTY
The 5’10” lanky 21-year-old was grit personified when she reeled off five straight points to come back from 16-19 and claim the first game. The very first time she led in the match, she displayed nerves of steel, a fibre that belies skepticism, leaves the jitters in the cold storage of a calm mind. It was gutsy, it was tenacious and, most importantly of all, the display came on her sport’s most spectacular stage.
However, as the second game began it appeared that Marin was not cowed down. Almost as if the loss of the first game had just embalmed her nerves into the potency of determination. This is the number one player in the world and you don’t get to sit on that exalted spot if you don’t have something special in you. That quality shone through as the match wore on. After the first game, Sindhu was never to lead again in the match. The closest she came to that was at 10-10 in the third but by then Marin had shifted a couple of gears, hit cruise mode.
When the match began, both players were a bit edgy and the rallies short. In fact the one really solid rally of the match came at 15-17 when the shuttle shunted back and forth 52 times. That rally went Sindhu’s way and that was
