The Indian men’s badminton team has a real chance of clinching a medal in the Thomas Cup final, feels top doubles player Chirag Shetty, who has been performing enthusiastically at the prestigious event after being ruled out of the Sudirman Cup due to injury. Huh. A few weeks before going to the Sudirman Cup, Chirag pulled his abdominal muscles, forcing him to give up the mixed team championship and he looks forward to returning to the court in the Thomas Cup, which will be his post-Tokyo Olympics. The first event will take place. The rescheduled Thomas and Uber Cup finals, the men’s and women’s team tournaments respectively, will be held in Aarhus, Denmark from 9 to 17 October.
“Two weeks before I left for Sudirman, I pulled my abs and I decided to skip the Sudirman Cup. But I am fit now and am really looking forward to the Thomas Cup final.
India have been drawn against defending champions China, the Netherlands and Tahiti in Group C and Chirag said they “definitely have a chance” of making a comeback with a medal.
“We have strong doubles pairs, not just strong singles players this time. So we can win medals also. We are definitely ready to medal. The last team champions we played was the Asian Team Championships and we finished with bronze, so I think we have a medal winning team.”
“Given the draw, we should first reach the quarter-finals and then step up our game for the medals.”
Chirag said one of the reasons he was ruled out of the Sudirman Cup was that he did not want to aggravate the injury given the fact that he has back-to-back tournaments for the rest of the year.
“Initially I thought it was just a normal stress, so the physio told me to rest for two days, but the pain was still there, so later it turned out that it would take another six days, so since I trained Couldn’t, I decided it was better to leave it,” he said.
“Till the last moment I had to go, but there are three more tournaments after the Sudirman Cup, so there would be no point playing five weeks without practice, I could have aggravated the injury. So decided to focus on the Thomas Cup.”
Chirag and his men’s doubles partner Satwiksairaj Rankireddy are currently not training under Denmark’s head doubles coach Mathias Bo, whose contract expired after the Olympics.
“We wanted Boe to stay but he had other commitments. He won’t be here full time so his contract cannot be extended. BAI was also happy with his performance, so the officials are still trying to work out a way.” And looking for some new coaches.
Chirag and Satwik had a great performance in the group stage of the Olympics, winning two out of three matches, but unfortunately they could not qualify even after considering the number of games won.
“It was quite disappointing to go out like this. I think we gave everything we had in those three matches. Going into the tournament, we wanted to win two and we did but no one would have expected that to happen.”
Chirag and Satwik are now eyeing a good show in the upcoming events, especially the World Championships in December.
“We are playing in Denmark and France after the Thomas Cup and then there are two events in Indonesia. If we do well, we can qualify for the World Tour Finals as well. But the main priority will be the World Championships,” he signed off.
The World Championships are scheduled to be held in Huelva, Spain from 12-19 December.
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