A thunderbolt has hit women doubles – it’s Liu Sheng Shu’s close to 400 kph smash | Badminton News

In 2010, Indian badminton was on the cusp of something truly formidable but not quite yet in fashion then – women’s doubles. The country had unearthed Ashwini Ponappa, a shuttler amenable to playing doubles. It was Jwala Gutta who handpicked Ashwini, and cannily for her variety in the most unobtrusive of the sport’s skill-sets – the defensive service. But Ashwini would soon unleash what was then the fastest smash on the women’s circuit, measured at 260 km/hr, and Indian doubles was suddenly carrying serious heft, and a promise of making a mark. A World Championship medal followed.
14 years on, at last week’s China Masters, home contender Liu Sheng Shu sent down a smash at a bombastic 397.1 kph. Along with Tan Ning, 21, Liu has regained the World No 1 spot. The Paris Games silver medall Liu, 20 years of age, cannot be definitively said to be in possession of the hardest smash. But at Shenzen last week, she led a troika of Chinese doubles shuttlers who were smacking the shuttle upwards of 390 kph.
Liu-Tan have ushered in an era of power-hitting (hence the nickname) into women’s doubles, and given their success, going forward, most will attempt to slot into the same style – hard-hitting, short snappy rallies, with overwhelming offensive flurries. It’s a huge departure from what women’s doubles had come to be associated with – long, never ending rallies (often around 100 shots long) and unbelievable defense.

Make no make, Liu and Tan had a 84-shot rally, winning it with steady nerveless defense. But that makes the well built pair’s game even more formidable – they can defend if they need to, but at all times, they will come at opponents with blering offense.
It’s the decisive, game changing Chinese advantage over Japanese and Korean running, rally games.
Liu, the younger of the two, also the leader amongst the two, is 1.75 m tall, and was picked out Beijing Olympics WD champDu Jing, who coaches at Liaoning province. Chinese media reported that at age 4, while strolling in the mall with mother Zhu Mingyue, Liu clung onto a badminton racquet and wouldn’t let go till a pair of racquets were bought for 200 yuan. The mother-daughter went to the town square that evening, and Liu caught 30 shuttles in a row, prompting her admission to a sports school at age 6.

She had prodigious smashing power from the back court, 10 she made the provincial team, and got into the national centre when Du Jing forwarded her credentials, vouching for her potential. Her mother Zhu, told Chinese media she was good at TT, rope skipping, roller skating and running, but badminton more or less looked her calling.
Paired with Tan, another aggressive shuttler, Liu won the 2022 Junior World Championships. At the Paris Olympics, the bustling Chinese would create a stir, going on to win silver after decimating Koreans Baek-Lee, a defensively sturdy pair, with the inevitable power-play.
There really is no subtle way to say this – but power is everything in this sport, and it can render contests lopsided, if backed solidity in defense. What’s surprised the Chinese legends though is how the duo haven’t paused for a breath since Paris.
The Chinese combine have been in 5 straight Super Series finals in the past few months, winning 3.
The Chinese shuttlerati weren’t immediately impressed. Chinese doubles legend Cai Yun who now finds their relentlessness staggering, had reckoned they were more like two singles players playing doubles, lacking continuity and coordination and with slow racket raising at the net.

The aftermath – the Chinese duo trained so hard that now they boast of one of the most intimidating and accurate games at the net. It’s not quite the silken deception, but wry power scythes even at the net. The front court game, a weakness as per the Chinese legends once, is now short-range turns of the knife. It was bad enough that their power smash from the back was backed agility in defense. But now opponents have to contend with high quality net play. From both of them. They stand side side, but can backtrack just as easily as charge the net.
It was their first back to back titles, and they landed in Shenzen exhausted from winning in Japan, and spent the day at dope testing, missing on court acclimatization. Such is the competition in China in the era of their greatest pairing Chen-Jia, themselves near unplayable, that Liu-Tan had never won a title in China until last week. They would tick that box finally at Shenzen.
Liu Sheng Shu incidentally grew up as a fan of Japanese Yuki Fukushima, an aggressive shuttler known for her speedy deep clears, someone who raised the WD tempo with her attack. Defensive rally games might survive a few years, but cannot outlast Chinese aggressive games.
In their earlier meeting at China, Indians Treesa Jolly-Gayatri Gopichand couldn’t avoid a straight sets loss to Liu-Tan, but the Chinese are bound to push Treesa Jolly to bolster her attack, for she can go toe to toe with them on raw power. However, Treesa did the smarter thing of playing ‘placement badminton’, to briefly unsettle them. With Gayatri, who loves a good mental game, she can weave patterns to induce some chaos within the Chinese, because unpredictability is a fine weapon against power.
But it’s an uphill task fending Liu-Tan off, point after point, set after set. Even forcing a decider could prove difficult. But the power-hitting levels are through the roof, and the world is in the path of a proper blizzard. They remain a mondegreen to transcribing audio softwares – Liu and Tan, often misheard as ‘New in Town’. They sure stomp to the tunes of ‘new sheriff in town’ given how they’ve shaken up how women’s doubles is played.