In March, Indian men’s singles shuttler Lakshya Sen enjoyed a brilliant run at the All England Championships, beating Shi Yu Qi, NG Ka Long Angus, Li Shi Feng and Victor Lai before going down to Lin Chun-Yi in the final.
Despite missing out on the title, Lakshya capped off a memorable week in Birmingham with a podium finish.
But that brilliant run was followed by a string of first-round exits at the Badminton Asia Championships, Malaysia Masters, Indonesia Open, Japan Open, China Masters and Denmark Open over the course of the year.
While Lakshya had team medals from the Thomas Cup and Asian Games to show for his efforts, the repeated early exits at other tournaments were tough to ignore.
Then came the Hylo Open, and Lakshya broke a year-long jinx
of not winning a title, having won the Australian Open last November.
“It was a good run at the All England, where I reached the final and I was in really good shape. But two to three months later, I began experiencing a few niggles and injury issues that kept me off the court,” Lakshya replied to a query from News18 Sports during a media interaction.
“Thankfully, nothing was serious enough to make me miss the major events. It was a great experience playing the World Championships here in India and then competing at the Asian Games,” Lakshya added.
The star shuttler admitted that the performances hadn’t gone as planned but said that he continued to give his best and fight for every victory.
“I am happy that I managed to win a title last week, my first since the Australian Open. It feels good,” Lakshya said.
Speaking about managing injuries and regaining match fitness, he added that frequent travel had left him with little time to experiment with his game during training.
“I have been travelling constantly, so there has not been enough time to experiment with new things in training. I tried to work on certain aspects of my game during the tournaments I played, but managing injuries was a bit of a challenge over the last three to four months,” Lakshya told the media.
“I tried a few different things to manage the workload. In the two to three months leading up to the Asian Games, I was preparing well and focusing on playing as many matches as possible,” Lakshya added.
Having withdrawn from the Korea Open, which began on Tuesday, the star Indian shuttler will next feature at the Kumamoto Masters, where he will face Chinese Taipei’s Chi Yu Jen in the opening round.
