Young Indian shuttler Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, the one-half of the popular men’s doubles duo with Chirag Shetty, also known as ‘Sat-Chi’, turned 23 on Sunday. Hailing from Andhra Pradesh, Satwiksairaj joined the Pullela Gopichand Academy in 2014 and pursued excellence in doubles competition. Rest is history as along with Chirag, he went on to win many historic titles for India and even registered his name in the Guinness Book of World Records. Satwik’s medal journey at the sport’s big stages started off with a bronze medal in Asian Team Championships, securing the medal along with Chirag, Prannoy HS, and Kidambi Srikanth among others in the men’s team event. The men’s team will once again clinch a bronze in the 2020 event held at Manila. Satwik has four Commonwealth Games medals to his name. He has gold and silver each from the 2018 and 2022 editions of the event in the mixed team competition. With Chirag, he has won gold and silver in men’s doubles in 2018 and 2022. His gold with the mixed team was India’s first gold in a team event in CWG history. He was a part of the Indian team that made history in Bangkok last year, lifting it’s first-ever Thomas Cup trophy. The world’s supreme men’s team championship held since 1949 saw India capture the trophy for the first time ever last year. India defeated Indonesia, the most successful team in tournament history with 14 titles in the final. Satwiksairaj and Chirag have also won a bronze medal in Badminton World Federation (BWF) World Championships last year in Tokyo in a men’s doubles competition. It was India’s first-ever medal in men’s doubles competition at the World Championships. In 2023, he clinched gold medal in the men’s doubles competition at the Asian Championships held in Dubai with Chirag. Satwik and Chirag as a pair have been extremely successful in BWF World Tour, clinching a total of seven men’s doubles titles and ending as runners-up twice. Their run started with the 2018 Hyderabad Open and they followed it with Thailand Open win in 2019. In the 2020s, the duo went on a rampage. Not only they won big at CWG, Thomas Cup, World and Asian Championships, but also won the Indian Open, French Open (2022) and Swiss Open, Indonesia Open and Korea Open this year. The Indonesian Open was an extremely special win for the duo, as they become the first Indian men’s doubles pair to win the event. What made it even more massive was the fact that they beat the world number-one pair in QFs and followed it by beating world champion Malaysian pair of Aaron Chia and Wooi Yik Soh in the final.
