China Masters gave confidence, but need to take care of body: Satwik ahead of Asian Games

Star Indian doubles shuttler Satwik Sairaj Rankireddy on Thursday drew confidence from the recent China Masters triumph, but maintained that he and partner Chirag Shetty will have to manage the workload over 10 days of a gruelling Asian Games schedule.

Satwik and Chirag will be defending the historic doubles gold they won at Hangzhou in 2023 in Japan, but the former was aware of the heavy load a competition like the Asian Games can place on their body.

“Asian Games is a little special. It’s a 10-day tournament, as we generally play for only five days or so. You need to be fit enough for this long tournament,” Chirag said during a media interaction here.

“There will be a lot of travelling. There will be a lot of sitting through the team event matches,” he added.

Along with the duration of the event, Chirag admitted that the aggressive nature of their game doubles the impact on their bodies.

“I feel that we are the enemies because we play a lot of aggressive games. So, we might pick up a lot of injuries while playing with the tall bodies and engaging in fast rallies while playing doubles.

“If we are in good shape, we would have been holding that number one position for a longer time. But we had to skip many tournaments because we kept getting injured,” he added.

But is there pressure on them being the defending champions?

“For me and Chirag, it's always a fresh tournament. All these tournaments, I feel like I'm playing for the first time.

“We want to do well. We want to be there in the medal tally. But there's no pressure for me and Chirag,” he said.

But the victory in the China Masters earlier this month has given Satwik the confidence to go through the grind in Japan.

“…China Open, it was more about physical understanding because tactically, we were right up there. Playing back-to-back matches every day, I think that was more important for me. How my body is handling those situations. It was a big boost for me,” he noted.

Satwik underwent extensive rehabilitation for a shoulder injury before travelling to China, and he picked up the right signals from that event.

“I've been doing rehab a lot in the last two months because I was injured. I think the China Open, as I said, gave us a lot of confidence.

I'm in good shape now. There's no need to panic. I can play five matches in a row. That (China Masters) was a testament for me,” he said.

Before that, the campaign of Satwik and Chirag in the BWF World Championships in New Delhi ended with a quarterfinal exit.

The 24-year-old said the tournament convinced him of the need to take care of the body ahead of the continental showpiece.

“World Championships gave me a lot of confidence because I was playing without my weapons. I was playing in the quarterfinal without my A game.

“After that, I mentally decided that I need to take care of my body and not think so much about it (injury) on court.

“So, I think it's just that I have to be a little bit more careful of my body and manage the load on it,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Bridge Desk. It is published from a syndicated feed.)