Hong Kong Open Superseries: PV Sindhu needs to shrug off fatigue to defend last year’s runner-up points

There is no rest for the wicked, it has been said. Perhaps that saying applies in equal measure to the pure and the blameless, whose mind and body have been hankering for some quiet time, but who are driven by other compulsions, including a reluctance to step off the treadmill.

How, else, does one reconcile to the fact that India’s PV Sindhu has chosen to disregard the physical and mental fatigue she so clearly displayed in the course of her quarter-final loss to Chinese teenager Gao Fangjie in the China Open Superseries Premier badminton championships last week; and will be defending the 7,800 points she got last year for her runner-up position in the Hong Kong Open Superseries?

Perhaps the World No 2 spot she currently occupies in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) pecking order is more dear to the 22-year-old shuttler than the rest she sorely needs to shed the stiffness from the limbs and the staleness from the mind, although she has no chance whatsoever of overtaking the current numero uno player, Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei.

Tai sits atop the rankings with 95,539 points, well ahead of Sindhu’s 82,486. So, even if the Indian were to get the 9,200 points that are awarded for winning the Hong Kong Open, and Tai were to lose in her opening outing at the Hong Kong Coliseum in Hung Hom Bay, Kowloon, Sindhu would improve her tally by 1,400 points to 83,886, which is well short of whatever the Taiwanese would end up with.

On the other hand, if Sindhu were to skip the competition, her tally would stand re-adjusted to 74,686 in the moving annual total, after deducting the 7,800 points for her losing finalist position last year.

In such an event, three players — third-placed Korean, Sung Ji Hyun (currently on 75,805 points), fourth-placed Japanese, Akane Yamaguchi (74,599) and fifth-placed Spaniard Carolina Marin (73,787) — would leap-frog the Indian, even in the highly unlikely event that all three were to lose in the first round, and get 2,220 points just for their participation. Sindhu would straightaway drop to fifth in the standings.

One feels a certain grudging sympathy for the Hyderabadi in her reluctance to relinquish her hard-earned No 2 spot, even though her berth in the year-ending Superseries grand finals in Dubai in mid-December is guaranteed. If she performs well in both the Hong Kong Open and the Dubai finals, there is an outside chance of her ending the year as World No 1, a position that only one other Indian, Saina Nehwal, has attained earlier.
Looking at the second-seeded Sindhu’s chances in Hong Kong, one can see the presence of a major obstacle in the way of her achieving her objective of at least reaching the final, so that there is no reduction in her present points tally — a projected quarter-final clash with Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi, who won the China Open just two days ago.

Of course, well before the Yamaguchi clash, Sindhu has to straddle two hurdles, opening her campaign against a qualifier from Hong Kong, Leung Yuet Yee; and then, the winner of the first-round duel between Japan’s Aya Ohori and Russia’s Evgeniya Kosetskaya. The chances of Ohori’s coming through are very strong; and the Japanese player is likely to give the off-form Sindhu a torrid time.

The other Indian in the women’s singles draw, three-time reigning national champion Saina Nehwal, has an even more challenging draw. She first runs into Denmark’s Mette Poulsen; and, if she wins, is expected to cross swords with China’s eighth-seeded Chen Yufei. Their winner is projected to clash with the top-seeded Taiwanese, Tai Tzu Ying, at the quarter-final stage.