What Satwiksairaj & Chirag Shetty can learn about responsibility to team from Chinese legends Cai Yun and Fu Haifeng | Badminton News

Satwiksairaj Rankireddy played with a racquet flung into the crowd Chinese doubles legend and 2012 and 2016 Olympic champion Fu Haifeng, when young. There is a fair bit of the four-time World Champion’s power-game that oozes from the winning game of both him and Chirag Shetty, no dainty lily when it comes to power-hitting himself. But it is in the animated, motivational videos of Haifeng’s doubles partner, the speed whiz Cai Yun that the Indian duo can find clues to building a psychological framework, as they chase their own Olympics gold at Paris.
Cai-Fu are legendary Olympic champions who were primed for a gold in front of their doting home crowd at the Beijing Games finals in 2008, but just couldn’t overrule the magic of Indonesians Hendra Setiawan and the late Markis Kido.
The leadup to London saw them win all the next three World Championship titles in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Like Satwik-Chirag, they were dominant in some of the biggest tournaments in between two Olympics, but the march to gold wasn’t so straightforward.

They had the fitness, the aggression, the attack, the mentality and the swagger. Yet, when Cai Yun speaks energetically, addressing the Paris-bound Chinese pairings, he often urges them to get their minds aligned into a typically Chinese way of approaching Olympics: not as athletes with fervent individual ambitions, but as a team. Of not just two but as one squad.
In a video interview with Chinese CGTN, Cai is telling the show hostess about the tough journey in preparations for the Olympics: “This is what an athlete has to face. Loneliness. Long term injuries. In order to recover, you have to work on it all alone. Nobody can do that for you.” Yet, heading into London, after the Beijing disappointment, one incident added a cloak of warm, fuzzy team-ship to his lead-up and made the subsequent medal memorable. “Actually it’s small things that make you realise the game isn’t just about yourself,” he says.
This story involves sweat, tears and toil. And blood too. Cai Yun was at their training base, Qingdao ahead of the London Olympics where the team was camped. “I was about to brush my teeth in front of the mirror at night. All of a sudden the whole mirror shattered. Fell to the floor. Pieces of glass hit me. I had pieces of glass all over my body and couldn’t move and didn’t dare to remove them from my body because I would hurt myself further,” he recalls the shocking nightmare, which was scary and real.
He called his supervisors, still shaking, he remembers. “And in no time all our dozen coaches and managers showed up in my room. In that moment I forgot to feel scared. Instead I was surprised to see so many people. My life wasn’t in danger. I just had some cuts. But to see all the staff help you recover each day after that. And you realise the game concerns more than just you. So in the end what drives you to the championship is the sense of responsibility. It’s more than personal achievement. This may seem corny to some people. But you need a sense of responsibility to carry you to the finish line,” says the shuttler who had to settle for silver, considered a big downer in China.

Cai Yun, the three-time Olympian finally won gold in only his third Games, also addresses a micro-challenge: what do pairings do when they concede a lead? “Everyone knows that it is almost the last half of the Olympics Games cycle. It means mentality will become irritable or the stress will become difficult to control. So at this time we need to communicate better with partner. Find a common totem. The ultimate goal of the joint effort doesn’t change. We must be tolerant and considerate of each other’s character to go further,” he advises in a rare inter-personal insight into Chinese badminton dynamic.
Cai recalls blanking out when one of their leads was overhauled, and practicing simulations, especially after going down in Beijing. “So what should you do when you are leading? Sometimes we lead 7, 8 points and then suddenly opponents take 1-2 points and it feels like you are in a blackout. This kind of situation is the scariest that you don’t even know what you are doing,” he says. It’s where both the sense of responsibility to the supporting team, and their reassurance, kicked in.
Not just Satwik-Chirag, but also PV Sindhu, HS Prannoy and other likely Paris-bound shuttlers like Ashwini Ponnappa, Tanisha Crasto, Treesa Jolly, Gayatri Gopichand, Lakshya Sen and Kidambi Srikanth – would know after tasting victories in team events over last two summers, that when they go chasing that badminton medal for India, they are not alone on the court out there. There’s a Team India that took shape somewhere along the way.