Why did Satwik & Chirag crash out of the Olympics despite a win?

It is the first Olympics outing for the young Indian men’s doubles pair, and for a long time, this is the first that India has fielded a winning pair at the Olympics.

Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, 20 years old, and Chirag Shetty, 24 years old, ranked 10 in the world have been drawn in Group 'A' along with Indonesian world no.1 Marcus Gideon/Kevin Sukamuljo, Chinese Taipei’s world no.3 Lee Yang/Wang Chi-Lin, and Britain’s Ben Lane and Sean Vendy ranked world no.18.

Playing for the first Olympics, all that the Indian duo looked for was to make a silver-lining debut.

The ranking and stats showed that the best the Indians would manage is to win 1 match out of 3. There first was against the world no.3 Chinese Taipei pair, and the match was nothing as the pundits predicted. The Indians took the first game 21-16 to everyone’s surprise, but the Chinese Taipei pair returned and took the second game 16-21. The match was even with 1 game each and poised in favor of Lee-Yang & Wang Chi-Lin, as they led the match 16-19. But the relentless Indian pair fought back and took the match 27-25. And in other matches, the world no.1 convincingly beat the Brits in straight games. After Day 1, the group ‘A’ was tied.

On day 3, match 2, the world no.10 faces the strongest pair in the group, the Indonesian world no.1. Satwik and Chirag head-to-head have an 8-0 deficit against Sukamuljo and Gideon, and the only match that went all the way was a semi-finals match at the French Open, 2018. Indians going down fighting 12-21, 24-26.

This match was no different as the Indonesians thumped the young guns in straight games, 21-13, 21-12. In the other match, world no.3 also beat world no.18 in straight games, and the second spot in group A was open for nations.

On day 4, match 3, the chances for Indians going through to the quarter-finals looked higher as Satwik/Chirag up against the weakest side in the group, Ben Lane and Sean Vendy. Indians winning easily 21-17, 21-19.

But before Satwik/Chirag’s match, the Chinese Taipei played their final group stage match against the world no.1’s. A match, to everyone’s surprise, was won by the world no.3 in 3 games: 21-18, 15-21& 21-17.

Having won the same number of matches as Taipei, Indians failed to qualify to the next stage on the number of games won in each match. Losing in straight games against the Indonesians proved very costly for the Indians.

We caught up with the former Indian international and member of Indian national selection and coaching team Mr. Arvind Bhat to get his views on this result and this what he said, "The minions realized that once their match against the Taipei pair went into the third game, their work was done. Because, at that point in time going to 3 games was good enough for the minions to top the table whatever was the result of their match.

Hence I felt they may have not given their full effort so as to conserve energy and this led to the Taipei pair winning the 3rd game and the match. Indirectly they did a favour to the opponents. Of course I can’t be 100% sure of this.

I feel sorry for Satwik/Chirag that they missed out on a quarterfinal berth at the Olympics due to mathematical calculations. It’s just bad luck to some extent. At the same time I can’t take away anything from the Taipei boys too. They played hard and played to win”.

Despite the result, India has for the first time got a doubles pair that is up to the world standards, and we believe that they will bring great laurels to the country in the days to come.