NEW DELHI: An Arjuna Award recommendation at the start of the week and a World Championships bronze medal at the weekend. It has been a monumental week for India women's doubles specialists Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand.
On Saturday, they were looking to put the icing on the cake by changing the colour of the medal but they just fell short of their target.
After a giant-killing act barely 24 hours ago, they were in the process of bettering that, a feat that would have put them in the higher echelons of Indian badminton — not that bronze is any less. With new-found pep in their step, they even pocketed the opening game in front of a packed Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium on Saturday. However, their opponents — Liu Sheng Shu and Tan Ning of China — made a stellar comeback to stop them on their tracks.
Until the mid stages of the second game, the prospect of Treesa and Gayatri being in the final was a high possibility. However, things dramatically changed in a matter of minutes. The Chinese pair reeled off eight consecutive points to turn the tide towards their favour. The Indians just could not stop the rot and kept erring, which proved to be their undoing. The third game was a no contest as Tan and Liu showed just why they're ranked No 1. They took the game by the throat and cantered to win to silence the crowd.
The Indian pair lost 21-18, 13-21, 8-21, settling for a creditable bronze medal.
They might have ended with a bronze but this medal carries a significant weight as this is India's lone medal in the ongoing championships. Shuttlers like PV Sindhu, Lakshya Sen and men's doubles pairing of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty had bowed out in the earlier rounds to return empty-handed.
Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa were the last women's pair from India to win a medal at the World Championships, a feat which was achieved in the 2011 edition.
Despite the day's setback, the Indian pair was delighted to be part of an exclusive club — medal winners from the country. Treesa felt this latest setback is not the end, but just the beginning. "I think being part of that club, I feel so happy. I feel like this is just the start," Treesa said. "We just need to take this as a positive and in a confident way. Even that Arjuna Award they announced, I feel like that also gave us some boost in this tournament."
Before the start of the tournament, not many would have expected them to come this far, let alone stretch the World No 1 pair to three games in the semifinal stage of the Worlds.
"We created so much (of an) upset and it's such a great week for us. We had many great matches and there were plenty of takeaways," Treesa said.
At 12-12, the second game was in the balance. That's when the Chinese pair used their experience to take the momentum away from Indians. "In the second set, they played very patiently and I think we couldn't match both. I mean it happens. Treesa played really well from the back court. If I had supported a little more from the net, we could have pulled off the second set. But also in the third set, there were a few points which we could have converted, but the rhythm didn't come," Gayatri said.