‘Need a good heart to play doubles’: Satwiksairaj Rankireddy displays on his Thomas Cup-winning pairing with Chirag Shetty

It’s a bit just like the rhyme-wars and punchline-disses of hip-hop’s rival emcees, the place the aggressive juices flip lyrically snarky however the mutual respect and admiration stays intact, as they begin thriving off opponents’ verbal hostility.

Satwiksairaj Rankireddy oozes a rapper’s vibe when he declares: “Tum Denmark se hai, toh main Amalapuram se hoo (If you are from Denmark, I’m from Amalapuram)” within the softest, most matter-of-fact of Andhra drawls.

He isn’t precisely connoting his Konaseema district location. This is Godavari rap going head-to-head with the gushing River Gudena, albeit on a doubles badminton court docket, along with his buddy and fellow Thomas Cup champion Chirag Shetty in tow.

The object of his affable affliction is Anders Skaarup Rasmussen, one half of the Danish pairing with Kim Astrup, whom the Indians tossed apart within the semifinals of the Thomas Cup triumph final month. The recollections unpack in brief bursts of chuckles, as Satwik says, “I like those guys (the Danish pair’s antics), and I always say, ‘aur kitna karoge (what else will you do)?’ At the end of the day, I’ll only win. Rasmussen keeps doing funny things, my ego is hurt, and then I play even better.”

Recalling the Danes’ Saturday semis shenanigans, Satwik speaks of how his Amalapuram swag uncoiled. “Anders has this habit of interrupting my rhythm when I’m serving, to say, ‘Hey Ranki, just wait.’ Ab main pehle hi ruk jaata hoo (Now I pause on my own and throw him off). I mean, all these mental games, I’ve seen them at my Amalapuram district meets.”

“Earlier, in previous close losses, we would get nervous, desperately searching for rhythm. This time, under pressure, we didn’t get tense. I remembered all the tricks Amalapuram boys played on court,” he says.

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Satwik remembers watching ‘Saina didi’ on Neo Sports as a pre-teen, however not a lot of worldwide males’s doubles. “I wasn’t a badminton lover as a child and there were no Telugu doubles pairings’ names I heard of growing up in Amalapuram,” he says.

His father although was a licensed nationwide umpire, and had made the journey to Hyderabad to officiate on the 2009 World Championships that India hosted. After his linesman’s duties had been over on semis day, Kasi Viswanath would go and sit amongst a two dozen-strong contingent of Chinese supporters within the stands, because the shuttle superpower romped to 4 of the 5 gold medals.

“It’s when Chinese men’s doubles world champion Fu Haifeng, considered one of the greatest of all time (two Olympic gold and four World titles), with the best attacking game, threw his racquet into the stands after winning. My father, who’s as tall as me (very tall), jumped and caught the racquet,” he says.

Seekers are keepers. So, whereas different dad and mom hobnobbed with Indian officers to seek out funding for his or her youngsters, Kasi out-jumped the Chinese fan contingent for the southpaw’s valuable sabre – a Li Ning Turbo Charging N9. “My father believed, you don’t need money to play badminton, as much as you need a racquet.”

That readability left a mark on the fast-growing son. Haifeng gained 5 straight Thomas Cup titles – from 2004 to 2012. Satwik gained his first in 2022.

It all began there

The triumph in Thailand was a milestone, however Bangkok was additionally a place to begin for Satwik. The Indian mixture gained its first Super 500 in Thailand beating China, in 2019, to announce their arrival.

Satwik remembers the tragi-comical backroom scenes of successful that title. “We almost conceded in the quarters after my shoulder was hurt playing mixed doubles. I told Chirag, ‘bhai, aaj thoda dard hai, toh mujhe cover kar de (Brother, there’s a bit of pain, please cover for me).’ He told me, ‘mera bhi abdomen toot raha hai, tu handle kar le (my abdomen is hurting, please handle it).’”

“It was like one guy couldn’t defend, the other couldn’t hit! We wanted to concede in the semis also, but the physios did the job and taped us up. And we won.” It took them 15 lonesome days to bodily get well.

This time, everybody fetched up comparatively match, although Satwik reckons it was the staff spirit that proved the balm on bruised muscle tissue. After the Germany tie, Chirag began carrying his huge Marshall speaker into the dugout, and “we played DJ songs there and screamed Oi Oi Oi after every point.”

Crazzyyyy groupppp! The staff who dared to dream! 😍😂🤣 pic.twitter.com/KLmwe4uG9A

— Chirag Shetty (@Shettychirag04) May 16, 2022

The Chinese Taipei tie India misplaced 3-2 had been a jolt for the Satwik-Chirag pairing after they obtained to 21-19 towards the Olympic champions earlier than taking place.

It was the evening Chirag went lacking for 3 complete hours, in keeping with Satwik, after driving himself into one proper state of self-flagellation.

“We made lots of errors, and went totally blank under pressure, and were very disappointed. Chirag was really upset and kept saying, ‘sorry, I couldn’t win, maine kuchh khela hi nahi, bohot mistake kiya (I couldn’t play, made a lot of mistakes).’”

“Then he disappeared at 10 pm till 1 am, and no one knew where he disappeared. I thought he was in another teammates’ room, but later he said he was speaking to his psychologist. I didn’t say anything to him,” he says. A big a part of rising as a pairing for Satwik has been understanding when to rev Chirag up, and when to say nothing in any respect.

When the quarterfinal was gained, all celebration plans went berserk. “I had told my brother I’ll do some Pushpa step. And we kept waiting for Chirag to fling his T-shirt. But in the end, I think we just kept shouting and did nothing,” he laughs.

In the quarters, he had riffed Virat Kohli’s “racquet does the talking” celebration that Satwik had watched the star cricketer dish out to Australian crowds, and within the semis, he leaned on Surya Kumar Yadav’s “keep calm, I’ll get this done,” gesture.

He needed to slide in a Dhoni hat-tip, however ran out of matches to win put up the ultimate.

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While his mom had prayed to Lord Venkateswara ‘who got the shuttle shifted thoda sa idhar udhar (little bit this way and that) over net-cords’ as Satwik half-jokes, one other mummy – Chirag’s – had earlier rustled up a prawn curry and mutton biryani when the duo skilled for just a few weeks in Mumbai, below Mathias Boe.

Like an excellent steam engine that may lug a whole practice alongside, Satwik wants meals to get his badminton chugging alongside. It was this very dire concern that had him fearful, when Shetty requested him to journey to Mumbai for Boe, who then wasn’t formally the Indian coach.

“Food matters big-time to me. I see food as my main recovery. And when I have good food, my game goes well. If I eat junk, everything goes wrong,” says India’s non-green Hulk. “In Hyderabad, I have my physios, my comfort, my food. I was very worried how I’d adjust in Mumbai,” he remembers of the months earlier than the Thomas Cup.

All his worries had been unfounded, as Shetty’s household hosted him and a bunch of sparring juniors at their resort. “There were A/C courts, the reception we got was extraordinary. We had a jacuzzi for recovery. His family sent down juices and fruits and Chirag’s mother made us prawn curry,” he remembers. A well-fed Satwik is a cheerful Satwik and the journey opened his thoughts to coaching outdoors his consolation zone.

But simply so he didn’t miss the South Bombay jaunt, Chirag shocked him someday with tickets to an IPL sport – Royal Challengers Bangalore vs Delhi Capitals. “Good memories I made,” he says.

Language barrier

As leviathan as Satwik can get on the court docket for opponents, the younger man may also be a hibernating, defanged coiled monster, out of sheer painful shyness.

“Personally, it was very difficult for me because I had a communication problem,” he says of a debilitating challenge that gave him jitters. “Doubles is about talking to the partner, and initially I needed to talk a lot of Telugu which my partners didn’t understand.”

“I was very comfortable with earlier partner Krishna (who spoke the same language) because Telugu came naturally from within, but with Chirag bhai, I needed 1-2 seconds to think and convey what I was thinking after translating. I was petrified I’d come across as rude for saying something wrong so I’d shut up. I just wouldn’t talk, which caused problems.”

It was in watching the Indonesian legends – Hendra Setiawan and Mohammed Ahsan – that Satwik would glean necessary classes. “You need a good heart to play doubles. It’s like making a good marriage. You have to adjust every day. It’s not like singles, where you can just change your team around you. Here you have to take your partner along and go through that journey of tough losses. Hendra and Ahsan are very kind to each other, they never react to mistakes,” he says.

With no legacy or custom to comply with in India, Satwik and Chirag just about charted their very own course in turning into an elite pair. Though, Satwik had a quiet, unfussed position mannequin in 2016 Olympian Sumeeth Reddy. “It’s easy to say Hendra is an inspiration, or Koreans are. But I watched as Sumeeth Reddy and Manu Attri try their best to become a better pairing in Hyderabad.”

“Sumeeth would work very hard, never get bothered by politics, never skipped practice, just turned up every day and put in the hard work. For me as a junior, he was the top standard of how much more effort I needed to put in to become a better player. The fire inside him was unparalleled, he never gave up.”

As India raised the bar in doubles, with a Thomas Cup win, Satwik reckoned he owed the Indian pairings earlier than him gratitude. For making an attempt.

Epilogue: It bothers Satwik that the Thomas Cup staff didn’t return and have a good time the triumph collectively. “It hurt me a little, because some of us returned early. We didn’t really celebrate together at home. Then everyone had different commercial commitments,” he says.

The Thomas Cup triumph was additionally the proper cue for the Indian males’s staff to slay some psychological demons, constructed over sustained trolling of many of the gamers once they weren’t the smouldering sizzling property they grew to become after successful the staff championship.

“Deep inside, trolling affects us. There’s too much negativity on social media and we all have had to deal with it. I wish fans understood, we go through injuries, have personal issues, and saying things like ‘you should stop playing badminton’ really hurts us. They don’t bother about our struggles, and it reached a point where we were scared to post our thoughts thinking abhi kya hi bolenge log (what will people say).”

“We would think twice before making reels, and I wondered, can’t we party or what? Or shouldn’t we even take a selfie? Saina didi made badminton in India, and look at how badly they troll her for posting selfies,” Satwik muses.

Unsolicited recommendation from his trolls? “Yea, they say, smash nahi maar raha hai aajkal (You are not hitting smashes nowadays). They don’t realise I’m adding variations. Or that I’m not a robot to send down 1,000 smashes per match,” he roars. At 22-21 within the second sport towards the Indonesians, Satwik despatched down a steep smash that bisected the Indonesians. “That one was too good,” raps Satwik, needing no social media validation.