Badminton World Championships: HS Prannoy goes down in late-night thriller; but not before showing his trademark fight against Antonsen

Paris wasn’t very kind to Prannoy at the Olympics last year as he battled health issues, and the city threw up a tough opponent this early in the piece at the World’s. But Prannoy reserved his best fighting badminton, a mix of delectable stroke making, no-holds-barred power play and a mentally tenacious attitude that turned a late night match (beyond 2 am in India) into a thriller, that will stay memorable for anyone who watched.

Of course, the loss means the match will get lost in the pages of time. But Prannoy always plays in the here and now – unfazed by the last point, unfettered by what might come next. So he remarkably picked up the pattern that has defined his late-career success — he loses the first set, and then the real fun starts. Without fail, it’s how he’s won his big moments – World’s bronze dumping Axelsen, Asian Games bronze, Thomas Cup third singles. The rope-a-dope trick didn’t yield a win here, but he had Antonsen in serious trouble. To his credit, the tenacious Dane didn’t let his ranking or reputation juxtaposed against the presence of a rank outsider, mess with his focus, as Axelsen had. And in the end, Prannoy ran out of magic.

But till the last three points, Prannoy stayed true to his playing style, where the higher the pressure and unlikelier the chance of him winning — the greater his shot quality gets.

Click here for a recap of India’s action at the BWF World Championships on Day 3.

Cat and mouse game

The first set was a goner at 8-21. Prannoy, and to some extent his coach Gurusaidutt, knew the match wasn’t. From the midpoint of the second, Prannoy began to tap Antonsen on the shoulder, knocking in points, never letting him get out of sight or string a comfortable lead. The discomfort Prannoy caused him will prove to be character-building for the Dane, looking for his first world title.

So, the cat and mouse game began. Antonsen looked like Jerry. Prannoy snapped like Tom. Both didn’t cross lines with verbals, and kept the badminton immensely watchable.

When it was 13-14 in the second set, Prannoy pulled out a crosscourt drop to keep pace at 14-14. A cross smash to make up the narrow deficit and reach 16-16, a backhand cross slice to snap at heels and go up at 18-17. Prannoy was doing that thing again. After uncountable times in the past. Hans Kristian Vittinghuus, now coaching Antonsen, wore a bemused look and would have seriously wondered if he was about to be hit with a bout of Prannoy’s ‘Been there, Dane that.’

Not giving up isn’t just mapped on his DNA – fighting with back against the wall is Prannoy’s default setting. Axelsen felt it at the last World’s when he was 31, it threatened to be Antonsen now in Paris, at 33. The Indian veteran has this uncanny ability to pull out the most precise shot at just the right time. The mammoth, monstrous, masterly, magnificent crosscourt smash never lets him down. Let’s just say, Antonsen outsmashed him.

But fighting in the second, Prannoy kept at it. With scores going neck to neck in the decider, literally just one point separating the two, Prannoy stalked Antonsen with a variety and consistency of precision in strokes that had discipline watermarked on it. On the midcourt flat exchanges, Prannoy had extreme control.

Antonsen wears a headband, is as restless as Steve Smith, goes jogging around the court theatrically after winning most points, and is on the edge of combusting (or breaking into bawling) any instant. But he has learnt not to come undone, so he refused to blink too. Trailing 15-17, he wracked up two straight points with two down the line smashes. But how did Prannoy respond to Antonsen going 18-17 up? He once again brought out a winner from that hat – that is like Hermione Granger’s bag with extendable charms. Everything is stuffed in his mind and sinews. He draws them out one by one. And he has been a mentality monster to pull out the smashes at will, place them with an inbuilt radar.

In the end stages of the decider, the Prannoy ploy was to lure Antonsen into fast, flat exchanges, and then snap the rally shot with a sudden mood-bending down stroke. For large parts, Prannoy was drawing out errors from Antonsen and managed to lead going into the home stretch. His in-rally accelerations are phenomenal for a 33-year-old, and he doesn’t back off from an exchange, solely because his defense is watertight.

This one time he sprayed a smash, he knew he would pay a heavy price. But largely, he was smashing and playing half smashes and drops at will. Antonsen could keep pace, he could never tell where Prannoy would bury the kill.

One accredited supporter in the audience raised quite the din, bellowing encouragement to Prannoy even as Antonsen supporters chorused. But the “let’s go Anders…” could well have been “let’s go Anna…” as Prannoy is known in Hyderabad.

In the end though, being in the lead, knowing he was on the verge of something sensational, perhaps got to him. Antonsen sensed it too, sniffed the slight backward step, and went hammering his own smashes, almost using Prannoy’s ploy against him. 20-18 will haunt Prannoy because his game was so good on the day. That he couldn’t convert and the Dane rode the momentum once the lead was cancelled meant the Indian couldn’t summon that last ounce of calm to clinically get this done.

It’s a footnote alright, but worthy of a chapter, a book on how HS Prannoy used to lose the first set, and then launch a fight back, like a catapult – pulled back to max tension, before bursting forward.