Badminton duo Dhruv-Arjun wins long-awaited first international title

Coach Mathias Boe gave them an ultimatum that if they didn’t win the Maharashtra International Challenge (IC) at Manakapur, Koradi Road, they would have to keep playing Challenges, a bottom-tier level better than only the Future Series and International Series. Coach P Gopichand dangled an exemption – they could skip the jamboree hopping over to Raipur next, if MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila won the title at Nagpur and earned themselves a breather next week.
For the World Championships quarterfinals who had never won an International Challenge (or any circuit title), winning this Sunday was akin to clearing the boards, or an entrance test, before they were allowed to jam with the big boys of international doubles, for good.
Two IC losses in finals – in Bangladesh to Manu Attri- Sumeeth Reddy – and another in Nepal, had meant a tournament victory was a rite of passage India’s No 2 doubles duo had to cross to get into “tournament-winning” mode. At 20-19 match-point in the second game, Arjun-Dhruv missed and got dragged into a decider from the brink of winning. The start of the third game was the longest rally against Chaloempon Charoenkitamrn & Nanthakarn Yordphaisong of Thailand – a point they lost.
“I told Dhruv ‘bhai, legs tight ho gayaa.’ I had cramped really badly after the Thais were retrieving like real crazy and the rally went long,” Arjun recalls of a really painful moment that turned hilarious. Dhruv would turn to him glumly and say his legs were gone too. It was just 0-1 in the third. When they told long-suffering coach Vijaydeep Singh that the punishing rally had left them drained, he burst out laughing. “That eased the pressure,” Arjun recalls.

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The duo has a hory of losing from match points, twice managing it heart-wrenchingly: they were 21-20 and a game up at the Japan Open against Koreans Choi-Kim before going down. And from 20-17 in the decider against Malaysian Ong-Teo at the Thailand Open before losing 24-22 last year. The tide had turned at the Thomas Cup, and they had started winning close matches. But one could never be sure. There was no title to show for it. Wanting to earn their full-time promotion to the big league, the duo would step it up from 13-15 down in the third game against the Thais, and finally won their first-ever circuit title, winning 21-17, 20-22, 21-18 in 78 minutes. “There was pressure to win the title, because coaches had told us title-or-keep playing ICs! We took it as a challenge because there weren’t many ranking points or anything in it,” Arjun says of the takeaways for the World No. 26 pair.
How, from 20-19, phew
Botching match points is a particularly painful self-affliction. The Indians had overcome a 3-point deficit in the second game after taking the first, to arrive at 20-19 when Dhruv got a nice high lift. “I thought of hammering it, but they were ready for it,” he says. Having struck rhythm, the Indians had been confident of wrapping it up and Arjun went with a normal dipping serve, but Dhruv mimed the subsequent attack. Then the long rally at the start of the third, with both pairs jockeying for early dominance, took them to the pits. “I mean, we knew we can’t give it away after winning the opener and we could win it. We had our plans and kept it simple,” Dhruv recalls.
The long rally though turned into a contest within a contest, with neither side wanting to give away that point, and it all got a little crazier than just the first point of a routine decider.
Vijaydeep urged them to calm down and concentrate, yet go all out aggressive in the third. “The Indian recovery was good, even after the long rally where all four looked exhausted. But Dhruv-Arjun played crucial points better thereafter and analysed excellently,” he says. Both the Thais were smashing well, and the Indians had to keep the shuttle down. But after much huffing and puffing, Dhruv-Arjun earned their graduation, and might well have played their last International Challenge.