By Our Special Correspondent
Foreign doubles coach Mathias Boe wants the Indian players to channelize their “anger” after the loss to Malaysia in the mixed team final to “shoot some bullets” in the individual badminton events of the Commonwealth Games.
Defending champions India failed to retain the title after going down 1-3 to five-time winners Malaysia.
“I don’t think any of us would be satisfied with winning only silver. We had come with the aim of winning the team gold, but that did not happen. So now all depends on the individual competitions.
“We have a strong team of 10 really good players. Srikanth is a tremendous men’s singles player, Satwik/Chirag are really good men’s doubles pair and Treesa and Gayatri are really good ladies doubles players,” the 42-year-old Boe said.
“I trust all my players in the team. So, the team that was selected today, we feel was the strongest team. I feel, we didn’t play to our best but Malaysia, they also performed well.” Boe, London Olympics’ men’s doubles silver medalist, said the Malaysian side was more balanced and luck also went their way.
“We need to digest this, reload, recharge and then get ready to shoot some bullets when we restart in the next few days.” Double Olympic medalist P V Sindhu was the only bright spot in the final as the decision to pick Kidambi Srikanth over an in-form Lakshya Sen in the second singles backfired, with the former world number one losing in three games to lower-ranked Ng Yong Tze.
Commonwealth Games silver medalist Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty too couldn’t get across the Tokyo bronze medalist duo of Teng Fong Aaron Chia and Wooi Yik Soh.
However, Boe said: “Today, we have five relatively open matches. We could see that everyone expected Sindhu to win and that was also difficult for her.
“So, if it was just as easy as that, and we can say that we are favorites, this match we are going to win and not favorites in this one, we are going to lose, then there is no point in playing a tournament.” PTI
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