Indian shuttlers underlined their supremacy on the final day of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games with PV Sindhu and Lakshya Sen returning with gold medals in the individual competition here on Monday.
Indian entered Birmingham as a strong favourite and they lived up to the top billing, winning five out of six medals on offer in badminton.
The medal rush for India was led by the poster girl of Indian badminton PV Sindhu who captured her first ever women’s singles gold medal at the CWG followed by Lakshya Sen who captured the men’s singles gold medal.
It was Sindhu who was first up against Michelle Li of Canada and came into the match with a 8-2 advantage.
Sindhu started off well and was using the court to her advantage and despite some strong resilience shown by Michelle, she raced to an 11-8 lead at the break. After the break, Michelle tried to narrow the gap and picked up points with some great strokes.
However, Sindhu was not someone to buckle under pressure and maintained constant grip on the match to eventually race away to pocked the opening game 21-15.
After the change of ends, Sindhu started from where she left and was quick to exert her authority on the match once again.
The Canadian did try to stay in the match but she was nowhere close to the player who had beaten Kristy Gilmour of Scotland with rather consummate ease in the semifinals. However, Michelle looked completely out of sorts in the finals and had no answer for anything that Sindhu threw at her and she started making errors which proved too costly for her. Sindhu, who by then had tightened her vice like grip on the match grew more confident after each point and she hardly broke a sweat and eventually won the game 21-13 and sealed the match to add yet another feather to her cap.
Talking exclusively to The Daily Guardian, Indian shuttler PV Sindhu expressed delight on winning her first individual gold in CWG and admitted that it was indeed a very great achievement for her.
“I am really very happy with the win and really proud of my achievement here. We have played against each other for a long time but every match is a fresh one and you have to rework on the strategy in every match. Last time around I won against her and this time too, so I am really very happy,” Sindhu said.
Talking about the overall performance of the squad, the former world champion said, “It was very important for us to perform well overall. We played good in the team’s event as well but unfortunately; we missed out on the gold. In the doubles and singles also, we have done well and won medals which is good and everyone has a medal this time which is great and as a unit we are really happy to make the country proud.”
In the men’s singles competition, Sen fought brilliantly and made a stunning comeback after going a game down to win 19-21, 21-19, 21-16 against Malaysia’s Ng Tze Yong. The victory makes Lakshya only the fourth male shuttler from India to win a CWG gold after Prakash Padukone (1978), Syed Modi (1982) and Parupalli Kashyap (2010).