After Sai Praneeth pulled a rabbit out of his hat to win a thrilling second round match at the World Championships in Glasgow, chief national coach Pullela Gopichand spent more time discussing how his opponent Anthony Ginting could have wrapped up the second round encounter rather than concentrating on how his own ward pulled off the Houdini Act from 12-18 to win 14-21 21-18 21-19.
Gopichand wasn’t really off the mark in his analysis as the situation looked hopeless for Sai Praneeth for major part of the 72-minute encounter where the Singapore Open Champion was struggling to keep up with the speed of the rallies till just the new-found tenacity saw him stage a comeback.
It would have also been a déjà vu moment for Sai Praneeth who has been guilty of losing matches from the position Ginting was, only because he either lacked the patience to close out the match or was in a hurry to find easy points.
But on Wednesday, the world No. 19 just decided to hang on and wait for his opponent to manufacture winners and once the lead began to shrink it was the Indonesian who cracked.
“I think it is the confidence that I got since winning the Singapore Open that helped me pull of this match. Before that, I would always rue losing such close matches,” said Sai Praneeth.
For those who have followed Sai Praneeth’s career path since his junior days, the number of matches he has lost from winning position could lead an infuriating chronology but the Thailand Grand Prix Gold champion has definitely turned a new leaf since the start of the year.
He is more patient, willing to play one point at a time and also ready to grind through the points rather than going for expansive shots.
He did exactly all that against Ginting in winning the last nine of the 10 points played in the match to make it to the pre-quarterfinals in his first-ever World Championship appearance. He will play the winner of the match between sixth seed Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei and German Marc Zwibler.
It is no secret that stroke players like Sai Praneeth are not really big fans of big halls and slow courts where getting easy points purely on the basis of the quality of their strokes isn’t possible. That calls for a serious mental adjustment before they can find the rhythm and that is exactly what happened on Wednesday.
Things had started horribly wrong for the 25-year-old, who could not adjust to the conditions and made one unforced error after another to concede a 0-8 lead in the opening game and though he did try to make certain tactical changes by slowing down the game, he was always chasing the game.
The change of side did allow Sai Praneeth to take more control of the situation as he began on a brisk note and began pushing Ginting to play longer rallies. The ploy worked as the Indonesian isn’t really known for his patience and the Indian managed to penetrate his defence with a couple of deft cross court smashes to take the match into the decider.
Things were going neck-and-neck in the third game before the change of ends yet again changed the fortunes of players for a while as a lucky net chord, wrong judgement by Sai Praneeth and a few fast paced drives helped Ginting open up 11-16 lead.
“I was really struggling to play as he was very fast and it was difficult to match him at that speed. But once he opened up the lead then he tried to play more safe and find angles and that allowed me to prolong the rallies. Once I came closer at 16-18, I think he started feeling the pressure,” said Sai Praneeth, who need some medical attention to his fingers in the second game.
Gopichand said the real challenge after such long matches is to ensure that the player recovers well for another grind day since the matches in big halls will always tend to go long since the shuttles get slower and there isn’t a lot of wind. “Thankfully this was the first match of the day and he will have enough time to rest and come back stronger tomorrow.”
Having worked so hard in the first two rounds, Sai Praneeth is also determined to do the same.
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