Saina Nehwal's All England loss will be painful but she is headed in the right direction

The disappointment on Saina Nehwal’s face after losing the All England championship to Spain’s Carolina Marin was plain for all to see. It would have been even greater for having come so close. Saina won the first game convinvingly 21-16 and led 10-6 in the second. It looked like it would be her day. But Marin found an extra gear as Saina appeared to tire, mentally and physically, and won the next two 21-14, 21-9 to claim the trophy badminton players cherish over all others. The pain of the defeat will likely linger but it should spur Saina on to work harder because despite the loss, she has shown the determination and desire to do what it takes to become the world’s best. Saina’s decision to switch coaches from P Gopichand to Vimal Kumar last September shocked the Indian badminton fraternity but it was clearly the right one. Troubled by injuries, Saina seemed to have lost her way in the 18 months prior to the switch. Her world ranking had dropped to No. 9 and her game had become predictable. She needed a change. Since then, she is back back up to No. 3 in the world and won the Chinese Open last year. [caption id=“attachment_2142641” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Saina is only going to get better. AP[/caption] “We advised her to bring in variations,” Vimal told the Hindu last December.” She would go for broke earlier during each point on court. It is not easy to sustain over a long duration. Opponents are studying her game. Variations are useful.” Saina and showcased those variations in the first game, when she had Marin on the run. She pushed Marin to the back of the court, then brought her forward, then pushed her back again. She used the angles to wrong-foot her opponent and mixed smashes with clever net play. Marin and her coaches eventually found a counter and Saina was unable to respond, but the evidence suggests that is a bridge she and her coach will eventually cross. “I don’t want her to be dependent on anyone, on me or anybody,” Vimal told the Hindu. “I want her to work out ways [to win].” One of the keys will be staying aggressive. Saina was at her best when forcing the action in the first game. She backed off slightly in the second game and wasn’t able to recover the momentum once Marin found her range. The other will be controlling her nerves, something Saina understands. “I just lost focus and began hurrying, which was not right,” Nehwal said after the match. Playing against top players anything can happen at any stage, and you can always get nervous at some point in time. That’s what happened here.” The second big positive from the tournament was Saina’s 21-19, 21-6 victory over her longtime nemesis Wang Yihan in the quarter-finals. It represents the scaling of a mental hurdle. The Chinese have been Saina’s nemsis her entire career and she had beaten Yihan just once in nine meetings before this tournament and said afterwards that she “wasn’t expecting to play tomorrow” so had not thought about the semifinals. The next time the two face each other, Saina will no longer expect defeat. Reaching the final of the All England was the shattering of another glass ceiling. Saina has faltered in the semi-finals in the biggest events on more than a few occassions. Now she has learned how to keep her composure and go further. “I played my game,” she said of her semi-final victory over Sun Yu. “I went out there and treated it like a practice game and didn’t think about it being a semi-final.” Last September, Aparna Popat wondered if Saina had reached a crossroads in a career where she was struggling to adapt from being the hunter to the hunted. “After having maintained her form for all these years and achieving accolades that make her one of the greats of Indian sport, now things seem different,” Popat wrote on Firstpost. “It is vital that she finds her own solution and does not take the easy way out.” Saina has proved she is willing to take the hard road because it is only down that road that greater glories can be found.