Lakshya Sen’s run to the final of the All England Open Badminton Championships should rank high in the long list of great Indian sporting achievements. His crushing 10-21, 15-21 loss on Sunday to World No.1 and reigning Olympic champion Viktor Axelsen should not detract from the perception of his overall success. In terms of quality and prestige, no tournament quite comes close to All England. One of only three BWF Super 1000 tournaments — the crown jewels of the sport — it attracts the world’s best. And like Wimbledon in tennis, it is the first among equals, the oldest badminton tournament in the world with more than a century’s history. Indians have long had an emotional connect with All England, the acme of which came with the legendary Prakash Padukone’s stunning triumph at the 1980 edition. For Padukone’s protégé to come within one match of emulating his mentor, belying both his age and experience, is an astonishing feat. Lakshya is all of 20 and this was only his third-ever appearance at All England. But he shed the big-match nerves with ease, as he beat World No.3 and World Championships bronze-medallist Anders Antonsen (round-of-16), and World No.7 and defending champion Lee Zii Jia (semifinal) to go into the history books as the youngest of four players from independent India to reach the All England final (others being Padukone, P. Gopi Chand and Saina Nehwal).
It is fair to say that Lakshya has been building up to this. He was marked out for success since young, and he lived up to that promise with medals at the Youth Olympic and junior World and Asian levels. While excellence in the juniors is no harbinger of success at the senior level, Lakshya, under the tutelage of Dronacharya awardee U. Vimal Kumar, has transitioned rather well. The last four months’ performance, in fact, proves this. In December 2021, he secured a bronze medal at the World Championships to join a select band of seven Indians to have stood on the podium at the Worlds. In January, at the India Open, he beat the reigning World Champion, Loh Kean Yew, to win his first BWF Super 500 title. In the German Open earlier this month, he defeated Olympic bronze medallist Anthony Ginting and then shocked Axelsen himself en route to a runner-up finish. He is no longer just an object of observation but the provider of that emotional hook for many a young Indian fan and player. Elite badminton is no doubt an unforgiving and unrelenting genre, as he found out against Axelsen on Sunday. But if Lakshya continues to sharpen his game, spruce up his body and develop a champion’s mindset, the possibilities are endless.
