Saina once again failed to come good against Xuerui, who has now beaten the Indian nine times in 11 meetings. (Source: Reuters) Saina once again failed to come good against Xuerui, who has now beaten the Indian nine times in 11 meetings. (Source: Reuters)

Like a shark opening its snout and constricting its jaws over its prey, Li Xuerui closed down on Saina Nehwal from game 1 to game 3 and though the semifinals of the Malaysian Super Series Premier went to the wire, Xuerui had wrested the sort of defiant initiative in game 2 and again in the latter part of the decider, which unsettles opponents.

The moaning over the weekend will be over Saina Nehwal losing the World No. 1 spot to Xuerui, who battled on after a tame first set where she was down on her knees, to regaining her strength and claiming the pressure points in the decider which the Chinese won 13-21, 21-17, 22-20. The rub of luck too went against the Indian on this day.

Nehwal will drop from the perch and the Chinese could leap back on top of rankings Thursday, and with Carolina Marin (currently No. 2, and in the final) in the mix, the Indian’s oh-so-brief stay at the top was always to be a charmed life. But independent of the dull numbers-narrative of tedious rankings, the semifinal at the Putra stadium was a fitting battle between two women — the only ones who’ve been No. 1 for the last 28 months — and Nehwal showed that even if she couldn’t hang onto the top spot this week, she would take on the role of the harasser and chaser and not allow Xuerui to settle down on her perch either.

For long parts of the semifinal, it looked like Nehwal had the match in her control: a blitzing 21-13 first set, where she went from trailing 5-6 to leading 11-6, and later up 12-7 in the decider. Xuerui though wasn’t slackening or being worn down, and came back with bursts of speed and strength and a seasoned all-court game that fetched her the levelling set as she began to tighten the noose with crunching points and counters.

Contrasting halves

Xuerui was having the better of the high-quality net exchanges, though only marginally. The Chinese Olympic champion neatly divided every set into two contrasting halves and changed gears rapidly at breaks even though Nehwal was sneaking in her own winners, staying in the hunt with smashes — she even tried a couple of jump smashes on the day. From 13-12 up in the decider began a thrilling hunt with each of the Indian’s winners receiving a gutsy retort from the Chinese champion till 19-18. It was high quality badminton that Nehwal had to summon after she’d looked quite imperious the whole of last two weeks against lower-ranked opponents playing steady. However, the sort of game that will help her stay at No. 1 is still one step away.

Xuerui pushed the pace at key moments, and Nehwal couldn’t vary it at that point. The Chinese girl is also most comfortable from standing behind the service line, and needed to be pushed back. “Saina needs to employ her half-smashes more from the sidelines and mix it with the sharp drops that can work against Xuerui. Small tactical changes needed, but it was a close match,” coach Vimal Kumar said.

No reviews

Down a match point at 20-19, Nehwal would play a gutsy diagonal flick to the corner to level at 20-all, but Xuerui had stepped it up a notch herself and finished with a running smash from the mid-court. There was an unlucky net-tap which was ruled as a fault towards the end which cost Nehwal the chance to close out. And her smash might have clipped Xuerui on the way to sailing out by a few centimetres at the crucial juncture — but she had no reviews left.

The questions posed to Nehwal by the pair of top Chinese — Yihan Wang and Xuerui — over the past few years had forced her to make some tough calls on coaching last year. She had successfully cracked the Yihan-puzzle at the All England with a match where she could outwit the taller Chinese and possessed the arsenal to execute plans against the London silver medallist. Xuerui, a more consistent shuttler and mentally sturdier than Yihan, remains a challenge, though it can be safely said that of the nine times she’s lost to Xuerui (8-2 in the Chinese girl’s favour before today) the semifinal at Malaysia was the closest that Nehwal has come to severely bothering the new old-World No. 1.

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