New Delhi: It has been a busy week for PV Sindhu. Fresh from becoming only the second Indian athlete to win two medals in non-team events, she has little respite from sponsor and media commitments. And there’s a small matter of the Prime Minister waiting to greet her.
Sindhu, though, is unruffled. She knows the drill; she has been the toast of the nation before.
This morning, in her flowing white dress, with soft yellow light gently pouring down on her from the festooned ceiling, her hair sitting pretty on those well-built shoulders, Sindhu exuded the refined, rarified grace befitting a double Olympic medallist.
She looked happily tired. There was an odd stolen yawn, and cheeky peeks into her watch. Perhaps the torrent of inanities bored her – which ice cream will you share with the Prime Minister? Please show your nail paint to the camera. How does it feel? Do you like to wear make-up? — but Sindhu didn’t let the guard slip. With a practiced smile, in a practiced tone, she delivered some practiced answers. Until, Tai Tzu Ying entered the scene and sent her mind racing back to the heartbreaking 21-18, 21-12 semi-final loss.
Against Tai, the tide turned in the second half of the first game, when she cranked the heat after the mid-game interval. The players had shared points till 17-17 when a lucky net chord put the Chinese-Taipei player ahead. Sindhu could only manage a point thereafter as Tai closed the game with four straight points.
“Yes, that is where the momentum shifted. I could feel it on the court too. She got lucky with that net chord. At that level, the margins are just so small. It was her day, but I feel had I won that first game, probably the result of the match would have been different,” she said.
“That defeat did hurt. I didn’t know whether to be sad or happy; sad because I had lost, happy because I still had a chance to win a medal. Ultimately, I decided to give my all for the medal. My coach said there’s a lot of difference between a bronze medal and a fourth-place finish.”
The 26-year-old did indeed find enough reserves to decimate China’s He Bing Jiao two days later. Trailing in head-to-head meetings against the crafty left-hander, Sindhu relied on her combination of down the line and cross-court smashes to overpower Bing Jiao. There was also a perceptible improvement in her net game and body defence, hitherto considered her not-so-strong propositions. The blocks were not tame and static; her deft deflections turned her defensive maneuvres into attacking strokes.
Sindhu admitted to having worked on these areas under Park’s tutelage. “There are no secrets in international sport and I obviously knew that’s where I shall be targeted. So we worked diligently to address those issues.
“The smash, defence, and net game were surely looked at. I remember a lot of people asking me what new I am going to show in Tokyo, and with my improved game, I am happy that I could show people something new.”
Having won her first Olympic medal as a relative upstart in 2016, the expectations were high from Sindhu in Tokyo, her indifferent form in two years leading to the Games notwithstanding. She wears the tag of a ‘big match player’ lightly, claiming that she doesn’t fret over the pressure of expectations.
“There was definitely more pressure this time. In Rio, I probably surprised myself with the medal, but here, I knew everyone expected me to do well. Rio 2016 will always be special because it changed my life, but Tokyo 2020 will always have a different place in my heart because doing it twice with all the pressure is not easy. It doesn’t matter whether I worry about the pressure; the fact is, it will always be there,” Sindhu concluded.
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