Satwik-Chirag eye success at Thomas Cup

After a stupendous performance in badminton's mixed team and men's doubles events at the 21st Commonwealth Games, young Indian pair of Satwik Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty has now trained their eyes on doing well at the Thomas Cup, starting from May 20 in Bangkok.

A week after becoming the first Indian men's doubles pair to win a silver at a Commonwealth Games, 17-year-old Satwik is now busy preparing for his 12th standard board exams while his partner Chirag is attending all the felicitation programmes.

"I am preparing for 12th exams and I will join the camp in 10 days for our preparation for Thomas Cup. We have a great chance to win the team event as we have three strong singles and two doubles," Satwik told PTI.

Chirag, who has gone to Mumbai to spend time with family, said: "I think we have a great chance of winning a medal. Our top three singles players are in top 20 and then we have Sameer Verma and in doubles also apart from us, there is Manu (Attri) and Sumeeth (Reddy), so if we can pull off one doubles, we can win.

"Srikanth, Prannoy and Sai Praneeth have already proven themselves and we are also confident that we can beat the best players from China, Japan and Indonesia," he added.

At Gold Coast, Satwik and Chirag gave ample display of their prowess, helping the team win gold and then clinched an unprecedented silver. "Till now, it is our biggest achievement, winning a medal in men doubles feels so amazing since till now nobody won it and so it's really special," Satwik said.

Chirag said, "The feeling of winning a silver has sunk in now. It was our very first CWG and returning with a gold and silver was dream come true. Our only aim was to get higher in ranking."

Talking about the schedule this year, Chirag said: "After Thomas Cup, we will have three back-to-back tournaments at Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore but there will be 20-25 days to prepare for that. We will also have two weeks to prepare for the world championship and another two weeks before we go for the Asian Games."

The duo feels their attacking game and the on-court chemistry earned them the rewards.

"We gel very well on the court now. I have started playing well at the net and create an opening for Satwik and I am sure if we can keep our attack for 90 percent of the time, there are hardly any pair who we cannot beat. So it is the attack and chemistry that helps us to play against higher ranked pairs," Chirag said.

Asked about targets, Satwik said: "This year we want to be in top 15 and we want to maintain that and to play finals in super series events."

Satwik also spoke about the role of Ashwini Ponnappa in his success.

"I think she is amazing during big matches. She showed her experience in this tournament. She played the key role in the mixed doubles match. Our strategies worked really well."