The company I work for had planned to organize a badminton tournament across all formats: men's singles, women's singles, mixed doubles, men's doubles and women's' doubles. Naturally I was excited. I mean, who wouldn’t be? Not that I am a great player, but this was an opportunity to just play and have some fun.
I had registered for the doubles event. I was not confident I would be able to play singles. Man, singles is so damn hard! I tried playing singles against a good player, and he comfortably steamrollered me. Needless to say, then and there I decided to not play singles.
But doubles is a totally different story. The space you need to cover is effectively halved. The responsibility is halved. There are more spaces to attack. There are more targets to smash. I am a much better doubles player than singles. Anyway, for the men's doubles, I had registered with one of my friends. He is much more of an attacker than me, and on his day, is quite good. Scary good. If he was on song for the tournament, we would have stood a chance against the best of our company. I am primarily a defender. My drop shots are good, my shots are precise. But oddly, I have the tendency to make silly mistakes, especially while playing with this guy. I don’t know why, but it happens. I have played TT doubles with him as well, so I know his instincts better. I may be marginally better than him at badminton, and if we clicked we would have been semi finalists easily. But if we didn’t we would have failed to give a good account of ourselves. Which is my worst fear. So I wasn’t entirely confident about our chances. I mean, it is the type of confidence, which you have on the day, when things are going for you.
Mixed doubles is a super story. Man, I was so confident about this format, since we had this in our bag. Me and my partner have played a lot of games together, and against each other as well. I knew my partner's strengths and weaknesses perfectly. She lacked a little physical prowess, but more than made up for it by her athleticism. The first time I saw her athleticism I was quite surprised. I mean, I did not expect her to be so good. (I thought, at that time, we were all beginners!) Anyway, we had something else in common: we never gave up. Both of us. I am likely to chase seemingly lost causes, and return those shots, much to the dismay of my opponents. But the fact that someone other than me also shares my style of play was quite endearing. I knew if we clicked on the day, (we usually did) we can beat most opposition. Maybe even make the finals. Maybe, maybe win the damn thing. I was confident we had it in us. Which is quite rare, in my opinion.
So what happened on matchday? Nothing. There was no matchday. The organizers cancelled it! I was so furious! How can they cancel a whole event? Postponing was fine, but cancellation? Seriously? Are you freaking kidding me? And when I asked the people who knew the reasons, and they said, "We didn’t get the court, so we decided to cancel." What a lame response! I, for one, did not believe this. Maybe there was a genuine reason at the time, but surely they could have postponed it instead of cancelling? None of the other games got cancelled. Cricket went ahead despite inclement weather. Badminton is indoor, so why not proceed ahead? This may have sounded like a rant. But the thing is I was very, very excited to play at a badminton tournament, and it got cancelled. Probably just my frustration. :(
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