Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty lost their second straight final in as many weeks, going down to world No. 1 Seo Seung-jae and Kim Won-ho 21-19, 21-15 in the China Masters final.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty finished on the podium for the third straight tournament, putting together a much-needed run of good form in a troubled season.
Two things can be true at once.
The straight games scoreline and back-to-back runner up finishes may not show it, but this is a very impressive turn from the Indian men’s doubles pair given the context of this season. A few months ago in May, they were down to world No. 27 after an injury-induced layoff and a bad patch of form. Now, they are world No. 7, have revived their season with a hard-fought World Championship bronze medal and reached their first final of 2025 last week at the Hong Kong Open Super 500 and followed it with another at a Super 750.
The turnaround, even without a trophy, is indicative of their progress. Physically, they are looking the fittest they have for a long time and that has translated into consistency. Mentally, they are sharper and more involved in disrupting set patterns that would take them down in the past. Tactically, they are improving their defence and variations to counter the flat game opponents employed to neutralise their attack.
The proof is in the podiums, which have included morale-boosting wins against nemesis pairs Aaron Chia and Soh Wooh Yik (twice, at the Worlds and in China) and Liang Weikang and Wang Chang.
However, Satwik and Chirag’s evolution is still a work in progress. It is evident that they are working on expanding their skill set, especially after the blueprint to counter their fast and furious game became common knowledge in the men’s doubles landscape. The blow at the Paris Olympics last year, where they had no Plan B against Chia and Soh’s flat, low game, forced some introspection. With coach Tan Kim Her back, 2025 was about more experimentation and upskilling. The injury setbacks and the subsequent tougher draws as a result of being unseeded meant they needed more time, but the changes they needed to make their game more multi-dimensional are still under construction.
As seen in the losses: getting unravelled by the crafty service situations created by Chen Bo Yang and Liu Yi in the World Championship semifinal or committing a flurry of unforced errors under pressure in the Hong Kong final against Liang Wang. In both cases, their opponents got through their defence, tried targeting Satwik’s relatively weaker mid-court game and build massive (0-6 and 0-9) leads in the decider with a game plan to exploit their weaknesses.
The China Masters final, despite the only straight-games result, was different though. There was very little that the Indians did wrong. Their defence was stronger, they did not let momentum slip for too long and exhibited their ever-improving versatility, with regular movement between front and back court. A special shout out to Chirag’s variations and point construction, which has been fantastic in the last few tournaments. The difference having a backup to the Plan A of attack is crucial for the Indians.
The differential was the near-superhuman doubles badminton skill of Seo Seung-jae, who showed why he is a three-time world champion (with three different partners). In addition, the let-up from Satwik-Chirag when they had a handy 14-7 lead in the first game of the final proved costly.
To have a 7-point lead over the reigning world champions and most in-form pair on tour is a sign of how well you’ve stuck to your plan. To allow them to win 6 straight points while forcing errors and extending rallies with solid defence is a sign of the opposite. To do both in the span of few minutes and not recover quickly is where the Indians lost the match. Even at 19-19, where South Koreans had a made a fair few errors and the game could have gone either way, it was back-to-back mistakes from both Satwik and Chirag that clinched it.
In other words, even as the Indians have worked on their technical vulnerabilities, there’s still more to be done when it comes to seamlessly switching from different gameplans, adjusting to the different rally length and speeds, and avoiding long lapses in focus. So while they have succeeded in countering Soh-Chia’s stoically defensive ploy, there is still Seo’s ingenuity or Liang-Wang’s explosivity, for example, to find solutions for.
And this can only be done in the heat of the competition. The more they play the big matches and the finals, the more they can test out their evolving games. On that account, this consistent run has been remarkable, both to boost their rankings and to validate the improvements they are making. From having to withdraw mid-match at the All England Championship in March to being fit to go full throttle across two weeks in September after a Worlds medal, it’s a comeback to be proud of.
The learning curve they are on has been on an upward trajectory in the second half of the season, and the graph looks positive despite no title.
