Lakshya Sen at All-England: calm, unemotional, and unstoppable
On the smiley page of most phones, there’s that tight-lipped, blasé-eyed Emoji.
Or a memory filament of a yellow-clad captain (in blue) in command of his cricket universe. It’s a rare non-Indian face in sports because it’s patently unemotional – with a nonplussed bearing, living nowhere but at that moment, unaffected by what’s gone before, unruffled by what’s to come.
It’s the stillness before a 10.8 of India’s Olympic gold from a Beijing Monday morning, not the trigger finger. It’s the Lakshya lull in badminton, just before young Sen’s storming success.
Sen stood unmoved across the court, betraying neither pulsating worried nerves nor the cold clinical ploy that was in progress. Instead, he stood there breathing in and then exhaled the next short rally with a ferocious attack in the smash kill that Zii Jia was busted in one excruciating moment.
Sen turned mammoth at the net and charged, looming like a colossus about to slay the ripped Jii Zia, broken from the forecourt. 18-18. The Malaysian hobbled the next shuttle into the net, scoring 19-18. Then there was the shove right in his face. 20-18. He snuck one in, albeit reluctantly. 20-19. Sen smashed one straight again on the second match point. But it was the despairing return that he put away with the winning follow-up.
Sen became the 1st Indian man in 21 years to advance the All England finals with a 21-13, 12-21, 21-19 thriller victory.
Prakash Padukone (1980) and Pullela Gopichand (2001) are both capable of bringing that stoic, unfazed equilibrium to the court. But, on the other hand, Sen brought the impassive monk’s indifference to the court after 21 years, as nothing about the All England stage fazed him.
Not his brilliance in defending himself in the tight spun net dribbles that eventually went his way. Not the previous point, which he dusted away without a sniffle, nor the next. Which would bring more of the same drama and high-octane scrambles.
Sen even wore invisible noise-canceling headphones or so it appeared. Because the diners, whether cheering for or against him, didn’t seem to be in the same dimension as his focused play.
India has waited patiently, nearly helplessly, for another All England final the tournament that defines a nation’s upper echelon. A quarter of India was probably not born when the last men’s singles final occurred (Saina Nehwal, of course, contested in 2015).
However, none of this weighed on Sen’s mind. The semis were being broadcast into Indian homes by the History Channel. But Sen never seemed overburdened by the magnitude of the moment. He had just finished another badminton match. There is no visible stress.
