Like David vs Goliath, he conquered the giant. Yes! It is Parupalli Kashyap. In the recently concluded Indonesian Open Superseries premier badminton event, he defeated World No.1 Chen Long for the second time in his career. The match was billed as a no contest as it was expected that Long would cruise past the Indian but at the end of the match the result was different as the 28-year-old dogged to grind out a well-deserved victory.
Let's talk about Kashyap's game style: He does not possess any specific offensive weapons in his arsenal to win easy points, but he has a good all court game and particularly good net dribbles to set points in his favour. He does not have a powerful jump smash to hurt his opponents as well and he is your typical middleweight player. But in the defensive side of things he is very strong as he absorbs all the attacks and counters at times.
When he is playing high-rank opponents or big smashers, he usually gets it all wrong with his approach where he becomes hasty in rallies and his movements in the court are too much unnecessary in sake of increasing the pace of the rallies. This wasn't his usual game where he dictates the rallies in his own speed and upping the ante only when he senses the right moment. And he rarely commits any mistakes when playing confident and generally keeps the rallies long enough to grind out matches.
He must play his original game even against his higher opponents. As it is easier said than done but he tasted success only with that kind of play and this takes some confidence to incorporate your game time and again. As a remainder to his unflinching ability, in the Commonwealth finals last year in Glasgow, he came from behind in the decider to clinch gold where he made his opponent commit many mistakes. If Kashyap sticks to his approach and game we can expect many more medals from him.
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