Which Lakshya Sen appeared in the Asian Games? His very best version

At 14:19 in the third game, Lakshya Sen was two points away from another defeat. The score was annoying, but the setup was even worse. India played Japan in the men’s quarter-finals of the Asian Games and Lakshya was tasked with opening the tie against Kodai Naraoka, a familiar opponent who had his number since his junior days.

A moment now: “Which Lakshya will appear today?” has become something of a running joke on badminton Twitter, shorthand for the peculiar unpredictability of a player capable of extraordinary highs and confusing lows. In Japan, where the noise around was loudest, Lakshya offered a fairly convincing answer.

Most of the evening at Ichinomiya City High School, he looked like a player trying to solve a puzzle. Hall drift made life difficult from one end, Naraoka was happy to extend the rally and Lakshya lost the first game 11-21. Lakshya recovered wonderfully in the second to win it 21-5 while playing from the better side of the court to find himself trailing again in the decider.

In 14-19 something shifted almost imperceptibly.

Lakshya stopped giving away easy points. He defended, fetched and waited. Naraoka began to feel the pressure. The Indian won seven points in a row to complete a comeback that looked unlikely just minutes ago.

When Naraoka’s last shot found the netthe Indian bench exploded. HS Prannoy and the rest of the team were happily punching the air but Lakshya just stood in the middle of the court and soaked it up. He shook Naraoka’s hand, then walked over to the coaches’ box and hugged the Indian coaches. There was no roar or fist pump, just the silent relief of a player who had finally found his way out.

THE FIRE IS BACK

Bengaluru’s Vimal Kumar watched closely. Lakshya has seen enough over the years to know that numbers alone don’t always tell the story.

“I was basically happy with the way the first game went for Lakshya,” Vimal told IndiaToday.in.

“From 19-14 when Kodai was up, Lakshya played something very special. When I spoke to him, I said the main thing was that he didn’t make a single mistake. Normally, with the unforced errors he was giving, he didn’t make a single mistake.”

Vimal was waiting to see this side of Lakshya again.

“After a while I could see some fire in him, which was very nice to see.

“When you do that in a team championship, it’s good as a leader,” he said. “He’s the best player in the country and he leads by example.”

It is worth recalling that Lakshya had set such an example earlier. He was part of the side that won India first Thomas Cup gold in Bangkok in 2022and a year later he helped the men’s team to a 2-0 lead in the final of the Asian Games in Hangzhou before China stormed back to steal the gold. In Paris 2024, at the age of 22, he became the first Indian men’s singles player to reach an Olympic semi-final, and then won the first match bronze medal match against Lee Zii Jia to fade in the next two.

These were not the results of a player lacking in ability. They were reminders of just how high his ceiling is, which is why it’s been so difficult for those around him to watch in recent months.

AS THE QUESTIONS GROWN

Lakshya did not arrive at the Asian Games with the slight confidence of an athlete amidst a purple patch. The months following his run to the All England final were difficult. The World Cup in Delhi in particular turned into an evening of uncomfortable questions.

He arrived at the home World Cup as the 14th seed. He left the tournament in the second round after losing to American Garrett Tan, then ranked 92nd in the world. The defeat was not just an upset on paper. Lakshya was ahead in the match but Tan recovered to win 19-21, 21-19, 21-17 and there were passages where the Indian was reluctant to take control.

Vimal did not moderate his assessment after that.

“Lakshya lost to a very ordinary player and there is no excuse for that performance,” he said.

He criticized Lakshya for being too passive, for not being able to get under the shuttle and for allowing Tan to dictate the assembly. It was a harsh assessment, but it wasn’t the verdict of someone who had lost faith in the player.

Quite the opposite.

“When I see him lose without a fight, it really hurts and you feel bad because I don’t want him to lose,” Vimal said in a later interview. “He is a player who can do much better.

This became one of the strange features of Lakshya’s career. The peaks are high enough to make the valleys feel deeper.

At the All England earlier this year, he looked like a player who had found a different rhythm. He defeated world number one Shi Yuqi, outlasted Li Shi-feng and reached the final, where he lost to Lin Chun-yi. More important than the result was the way Lakshya talked about it. He talked about keeping things mentally simpleto accept wins and losses and learn not to treat every tournament as if it had equal weight.

The run seemed to indicate a more balanced player. The following months complicated this picture.

An exit from the World Championship was followed by another early defeat at the China Masters. A player who spent the first part of the year looking like he could make a deep run at the biggest tournaments was once again looking for consistency.

‘DON’T FORGET THE PROCESS’

Lakshya Sen will also compete in singles at the Asian Games (Photo by Reuters)

There is a tendency when an elite athlete’s performance fluctuates to reduce the explanation to one word. With Lakshya, the word was often “mental”.

The reality is more complicated.

He has been working with Morne Brockman, a mental fitness coach, for about a year. Lakshya spoke about learning to separate one’s identity from the outcome of an individual game and understanding that a long season contains both victories and defeats.

Speaking to The Tech Word News last year, Brockman described Lakshya as “an athlete with a lot of excitement”, someone who thrives on energy and intensity.

So the challenge was not to take emotion out of his game. Brockman compared him to Rafael Nadal and Virat Kohli, athletes who have learned to make this intensity work for them.

Vimal believes that Lakshya still needs to spend a lot of time on this part of his game.

“Sometimes it’s not like they’re doing it on purpose, but they need to deal with it for what it is. You can’t just meekly go down. You have to deal with the issues,” he said.

“Sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of your badminton and spend a little more time on these factors to find ways to deal with them.”

The demands of the men’s singles circuit make this work even more important. When the field is this deep, there is little comfort in the rankings. Vimal’s point is that players around the top 30 can surprise each other, making consistency difficult.

“Badminton is not like cricket,” said Vimal.

“There are so many good players around and unlike cricket where you play every three or four months, here you play week in and week out. When you keep losing it can really affect you so the players have to find ways to deal with it.”

This is also why Vimal doesn’t want Lakshya to treat the mental side of his game as something he will come back to only after a bad run.

“It is a process that cannot be forgotten,” said Vimal.

“Just because you’ve won a couple of good matches or done well at the last All England, you can’t afford to neglect it. You have to put as much importance on working on your mind as you do on your technical and physical aspects.”

This is perhaps why the comeback against Narao was significant.

It wasn’t just that Lakshya beat the world number seven. He did so after being in exactly the kind of situation that had raised concerns in Delhi. He was behind, the match was gone and the opponent was in control. There was no guarantee that the next point would make a difference.

Lakshya just kept playing.

Now the temptation is to call it the moment Lakshya returns. It would be premature. His career has never offered such easy conclusions, and one big comeback can’t erase the months that preceded it.

But sport is often less about erasing what happened than reacting to it.

At the age of 14-19, he had a choice, which elite sport constantly presents in various forms. He could have let the previous few weeks, the expectations and the scoreboard become part of the next point.

Or he could play another point. He chose the latter seven times in a row.

For a player who has spent much of his career moving between extraordinary highs and frustrating lows, perhaps it wasn’t so much about making a statement as it was about finding himself.

The questions will return, as they always do. Ditto hard days. But in Japan, when the noise was loudest and the score was against him, Lakshya tried to stay in the moment. The fire was there. This time he knew what to do with it.

– The end

Issued by:

Akshay Ramesh

Published on:

23 Sep 2026 02:56 IST