All England Championships 2019: Kento Momota’s hard-fought win over Viktor Axelsen signals changing of guard

Japan’s reigning world champion Kento Momota wrote a sparkling new page in the annals of his country’s badminton on Sunday. At the end of a titanic summit clash at the Arena Birmingham against Denmark’s 2017 world champion Viktor Axelsen, the 24-year-old left-hander stood for a few sweet moments with his eyes tightly shut and his arms aloft as Japan’s first-ever male All England badminton singles champion in the 120 years of the prestigious competition. Momota’s hard-earned 21-11, 15-21, 21-15 triumph came after a riveting 80-minute battle that seesawed first one way, then the other, produced displays of great heart and courage from the two gladiators, and had them digging deep into their reserves in their effort to win one of the most coveted titles in the sport. In the other stellar title fight, China’s third-seeded Chen Yufei, who celebrated her 21st birthday on the eve of the All England, notched up her first victory in twelve meetings with World No 1 and top seed, Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei, with a brilliantly crafted 21-17, 21-17 victory over the 24-year-old defending champion who was gunning for a hat-trick of All England titles. [caption id=“attachment_6238101” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] Japan’s reigning world champion Kento Momota wrote a sparkling new page in the annals of his country’s badminton. AFP[/caption] Having proved herself to be as quick on her feet as the Taiwanese ace, Chen showed the capacity crowd that she had done her homework on her rival’s artistic and deceptive style of play. She was hardly ever deceived by the title-holder’s strokes, and proved temperamentally stronger than Tai, who has stuck to the Numero Uno position in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings for as many weeks as the number of years that the All England Championships have been in existence. The competition also ended in a blaze of glory for Indonesian old-timers and former world champions, Muhammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan, who returned from retirement to bag the men’s doubles crown they had won five years earlier, in 2014. Despite a calf injury to Setiawan, sustained during the semi-final on Saturday, the veterans used their vast experience to subdue the youthful Malaysian duo of Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik at 11-21, 21-14, 21-12, growing stronger and stronger as the match progressed. In the process, Ahsan and Setiawan deprived their compatriots, Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo and Marcus Fernaldi Gideon of a hat-trick of All England titles, but managed to keep the Indonesian flag flying high. Gideon and Sukamuljo, who had won the crown in 2017 and 2018, were ejected in their opening clash itself by the experienced Chinese pair of Zhang Nan and Liu Cheng at 21-19, 20-22, 21-17. Although Ahsan and Setiawan spoke up for the old guard in the doubles, the men’s singles event definitely signalled the changing of the guard, with the three players who have hogged the titles at the All England over the past 15 years – China’s Lin Dan and Chen Long, and Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei – failed to leave their impress upon this year’s competition. Six-time former winner, Lin Dan of China (champion in 2004, ’06, ’07, ’09, ’12 and ’16; and runner-up in 2005, ’08, ’11 and ’18) was ejected in the first round itself at the hands of Japanese journeyman, Kanta Tsuneyama, while his most bitter opponent over the past 15 years, Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia (a four-time champion in 2010, ’11, ’14 and ’17; and runner-up in 2009, ’12 and ’13), missed the competition after declaring himself not yet match-fit in the aftermath of his remission from nose cancer. Chen Long, who was champion in 2013 and ’15, and runner-up in 2014, and seeded fourth this time, was another first-round casualty, embracing defeat in straight sets at 15-21, 17-21 at the hands of Denmark’s Rasmus Gemke. It does not speak well of the reigning Olympic gold medallist’s form that his victor was promptly vanquished in the next round by another Dane, Jan O Jorgensen, who eventually met his Waterloo at the hands of Axelsen in the quarter-finals. [caption id=“attachment_6238131” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] China’s third-seeded Chen Yufei, who celebrated her 21st birthday on the eve of the All England, notched up her first victory in twelve meetings with World No 1 and top seed, Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei in the final. AFP[/caption] Of course, Shi Yuqi, who featured in the two finals that immediately preceded the 2019 edition of the venerable competition, was strongly favoured to cross swords with Momota in the final, but came unstuck in the penultimate round against a grimly determined Axelsen, who looked at very near the kind of form that had netted him the 2017 world championship at Glasgow at the expense of Lin Dan in the final. The gangling Dane won their semi-final by a 22-20, 13-21, 21-9 scoreline, to earn the right to meet the 2018 world champion for the 2019 All England crown. The portents were far from encouraging, for Momota had an imposing 10-2 record, going into the final, against a man to whom he had not lost in their last nine meetings. Not just that, but he had not even conceded a single game to Axelsen in their most recent five encounters over the past 39 months, since he had dropped the first game to the Dane in their clash at the year-ending circuit grand finals in Dubai in December 2015. Momota, who was fresh from a title win at the German Open last Sunday, opened to a 9-4 lead; and, though Axelsen reduced the margin to 9-10, and then 11-13, the Japanese southpaw put on a big spurt to grab the first game with an unbroken eight-point reel. It was his ironclad defence that forced the Dane into going for the lines, and for too much on the angles. A grimly determined Axelsen returned the compliment in the next game by staying with the top seed until lemon-time, and then using his massive height to rain down steeply angled crosscourt smashes or sideline smashes to the Japanese player’s weaker forehand side. Momota, whose netplay is normally delectable, made the cardinal mistake of clearing most of the shuttles from the net, and thus played into his aggressive opponent’s hands by ceding charge of the rallies. In the decider, however, the punishing pace that Axelsen had set in the second stanza began to tell on his staying power, and Momota began attacking more with his overhead sideline smashes to Axelsen’s backhand. The left-hander also began to play the shuttle more at the net, and won several cheap points by tapping the bird into the Dane’s court at the slightest sign of a weak counter-dribble. Axelsen might have been able to counter these tactics if his lungs had proved up to the challenge. But, in the aftermath of his absence from the circuit after his ankle surgery, his fitness levels have not yet peaked to Momota’s giddy levels; and, once he had let the top seed break away from 11-all to 15-11, the writing was on the wall. “He is not going to give it to me; I will have to go all out to take it from him,” Axelsen had said to his coach in the brief moments at the change of ends in the decider (the exchange was obligingly translated from the Danish by commentator Morten Frost, a four-time All England winner in the 1980s). And so it proved, as both men spilled their guts on the court in their quest for glory. A lesser man than Momota may have caved in mentally (as Tai Tzu Ying did, in the face of severe pressure from Chen Yufei in the women’s singles final earlier), but the Japanese refused to dance to Axelsen’s diktat, and instead went on the offensive from 15-13 to 20-13, to put the issue beyond doubt.

Similar to Momota’s imposing record against Axelsen, Tai boasted a perfect 11-0 career head-to-head record against Chen, even though four of their six meetings during the year 2018 alone had gone the full distance. In their most recent clash at the French Open in October 2018, the Chinese youngster had stretched the Taiwanese shuttle queen to 14-21 in the decider.

Clearly, she learnt much from all those encounters, and was fully prepared when she bumped again into Tai, who was going for her third straight All England crown. Yufei is one of the fresh Chinese brigade – the other youngsters being He Bingjiao, Gao Fangjie and Chen Xiaoxin – that seeks to take on the world after the retirement of Wang Shixian and Wang Yihan, and the non-availability for nearly two years of Li Xuerui, who has since returned to the fray. This time, Yufei read most of Tai’s strokes accurately, and therefore nullified her deception that normally gains the Taiwanese that split-second extra time to execute her next stroke. In fact, it was Yufei who dictated the pace and trend of more than half the rallies, making Tai extremely uncomfortable in both attack and defence. It is now apparent that the World No 1 will have to find something additional in her line of attack if she is to keep her pre-eminent spot in the rankings in future.