IBL 2013: Saina shows Mumbai she has a fiery side too

“Taufik Hidayat should accept that he has retired now and will not get the highest price.” Strong words from India’s most famous badminton player about her own Indian Badminton League team-mate who complained that he didn’t like the tournament’s auction system. Before facing the press, Saina Nehwal saw her Hyderabad Hotshots team beat Pune Pistons 4-1 and was coming off a strong comeback victory against world No 3 Juliane Schenk (17-21, 21-19, 11-6). [caption id=“attachment_1046933” align=“aligncenter” width=“380”] Saina is unbeaten in the IBL so far. PTI[/caption] Earlier in the day, Hidayat was quoted by the Times of India as saying: “The IBL didn’t treat foreign players in the right manner. I didn’t like the way players were bought and sold in the IBL. The foreign shuttlers were purchased for their base prices even as the Indian players were auctioned for higher amounts.” Saina denied any such treatment to foreign players was meted out: “No one was being unfair to foreigners. I don’t see this complaint coming from anyone else. Auctions are tricky. Someone gets a high price, someone low.” Her statement about retirement was as unexpected as it was pointed. Saina has rarely, if ever, said anything even remotely controversial. Yet here she was taking on a badminton legend who played on her team. Of course, she has every right to express her opinion, but you don’t expect this from Saina, and that perhaps made it sound uglier than it was meant to be. That she was full of praise for the former Olympic and World champion’s coaching made her comment stand out even more. Hidayat didn’t play the singles match but Saina said his advice was vital in her victory of Juliane Schenk and Ajay Jayaram’s upset victory over world no 5 Tien Minh Nguyen. That is the Saina we have all come to expect but while while admitting that she wanted to concentrate on the positives, she didn’t hold back in laying out the negatives after her match. Apart from the comments on Hidayat, Saina also complained about the refereeing in the match. “In the second set, some line judgements were wrong. I felt they went against me. Mistakes happen, but many decisions were against me. None of the calls were…” she trailed off, probably realising that she’d given away too much to the media anyway, before saying, “What is important is that we pulled the match off. We won it, and that’s what matters.” To be fair to Saina, some decisions may have gone against her, but such a reaction sends out a signal that she’s not focused on the game and was thinking about the calls even though she won. It also puts undue pressure on umpires in future matches. While they will obviously do the best job they can, subconsciously they could be affected. This is a strategy football managers have used forever, with the newly-retired Sir Alex Ferguson one of the best at it while leading Manchester United. This not to say Saina did it for that reason, she was more likely just expressing her frustration, but her comments were completely out of character. The first mention of the calls, where she said that the decisions were the cause of her ‘aggression’, was legitimate. Saina began to play more assertively in the second game, upping the tempo and moving her opponent around the court. But she stressed on the umpires calls enough to show that it was the first thing on her mind. Saina was also incredibly fired against Schenk. In the early exchanges of the second game, Saina was neck-to-neck with Schenk and won a few points on the trot – each celebrated with a loud ‘come on!’, a glare and fist pumps that we seldom see from her. This was a new side to India’s badminton queen, but not an unwelcome one. The crowd cheered her on, feeding off her energy just as she fed of their’s. The aggression Saina showed on the court eventually overwhelmed Schenk (helped, of course, by the home support). She is now 3-0 in the IBL, having lost just one game in three matches. As soon as Saina won the match though, the smile was back. The taut shoulders relaxed and she showed her appreciation for the crowd. Not only that, she also went on a victory lap and milked all the attention. During Ashwini Ponnappa’s mixed doubles match, Saina was making her way back to the court through the stadium, where she also obliged to a few autographs and made sure she acknowledged a group of young students who were screaming their lungs out with chants of ‘Saina, Saina!’ every 10 minutes through the whole tie. In the course of a couple of hours, Saina Nehwal had shown Mumbai that there is a fire that burns inside her and that she isn’t always going to be the ‘good girl’. Perhaps we should have seen this coming. Her comments about how she felt pressure playing PV Sindhu because people seemed to believe she would lose the match were a rare glimpse into her psyche, and proved she is not immune to public perception and pressure.