Coach Mathias Boe not 100% happy with Satwik/Chirag bronze medal at World Championship

While winning the men's doubles gold at the Commonwealth Games was a dream come true for the World No. 7 team of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, the missed opportunity to improve the medal colour from bronze at the World Championships in Tokyo after being fully prepared and deserving of it will linger somewhat.

"I hate losing and I hate losing on behalf of my players as well! What is sad is that we knew we could have played better and taken some of the opportunities against the Malaysians. The idea that we had such a good chance perhaps also played on Satwik/Chirag's mind."

Although the Malaysian team of Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik have a similar streak of never losing to the Indians, just as the Minions — Kevin Sukamuljo and Marcus Gideon — against whom Satwik/Chirag have yet to win, Boe thinks that this tendency may be outdated.

"I don't consider the Minions as a threat anymore, they are not the strongest currently. The Malaysians are good and the matches have always been close but until we get that first win over them and know that we can do it, it will inspire us to do better," Boe says.

The pair that shone out and rose from the shadows of the previous pair, aside from Satwik and Chirag, is MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila, whose performance at the World Championships was nothing shy of a dream. "Arjun and Dhruv were the underdogs in all the matches they played. They won three back-to-back high-level matches and it is the best I have seen them play, during my stint here."

"But it was also their first match and they didn't play well - they were shaky and rusty and getting used to conditions so we were able to play strategically very well and could outmanoeuvre them," Boe analysed.

The Malaysian team of Thinaah Muralitharan and Pearly Tan was waiting for the women's doubles bronze medalists at the CWG, Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly. They faced the World No. 11 pair from Malaysia, who are significantly superior at this point, four times in 2022, but they lost each time. "But it was their first World Championships and with me and Arun Vishnu as coaches, they were also probably more nervous as they didn't want to let us down," Boe conveys.

"They made a lot of unforced errors even at the CWG against this duo, in matches that could have gone our way..."