Lakshya Sen Overcomes Towering Filimon Test To Reach Second Round At Badminton World Championships

For a moment, the Indira Gandhi Stadium held its breath. Lakshya Sen, up against the towering 6 ft 3 in frame of Austria's Collins Valentine Filimon, had just dropped the opening game on home soil at the BWF World Championships.

What followed was a response befitting the occasion, the home favourite tore through the next two games to close out a 16-21, 21-8, 21-4 win in 45 minutes, storming into the second round in style.

Sen walked out to a rapturous ovation from the home crowd, the kind reserved for a player carrying the weight of the host nation's expectations into a World Championships on its own soil. That support would prove decisive by the end of the contest, but it took a shaky opening exchange before the occasion settled in his favour.

The conditions inside the stadium played spoiler early on. A persistent drift affected both players, but it was Sen who bore the brunt of it, second-guessing the power on his net shots for fear of sending them long. Filimon, ranked below him but unburdened by the same hesitation, made him pay for that uncertainty in the opening game.

Game One - Sen Left Searching For Answers

Sen struggled to find his rhythm from the outset, unsettled by the swirling wind that threw off his touch at the net. The two shuttlers traded blows until 8-8, after which Filimon pulled ahead with a string of smashes to lead 12-10, then extended it to 15-12 with a well-disguised change of angle.

A cluster of errors at the net allowed the Austrian to reel off four straight points, and though Sen clawed back with a smash to trail 15-19, a final net error handed Filimon the opening game 21-16.

Game Two - Sen Finds His Range

The picture shifted the moment ends changed. Sen settled into his attacking game, using down-the-line smashes to build early confidence, and the pair were locked at 7-7 before he wrestled control of the contest. He surged to an 11-8 lead at the interval, then reeled off ten unanswered points as Filimon's resistance faded, taking the second game with room to spare.

Game Three - No Way Back For Filimon

There was no let-up once the decider began. Sen kept up the aggression that had turned the match around, forcing a string of unforced errors out of his opponent to move to a commanding 15-1 lead before closing out the contest 21-4 with ease.

Sen Reflects On The Turnaround

Sen was candid about the adjustments that turned the match in his favour.

"I think there was a bit of wind in the stadium and it was the first match. My tactics were not working well and my shots, especially the ones I was playing with the net, were going very short because I was scared that they would go out. I think that was not working and in the second set, I tried to open up the game. I brought him to the rallies and I think that helped," he said.

He explained that patience was the key change after the opening game.

"I made a few changes in the game after the first set. In the second set, I think it was very important to play patiently. In the third set, I was very confident starting the game. I think my body language was also much better than the first set," he said.

Asked about the drift that troubled both players early on, Sen said the adjustment came down to controlling his shots rather than forcing them.

"Every time I would play a shot, I was scared that he would go out if I gave too much power on it. That is why I was not playing freely on the first set. But on the second set, when I came in, I could easily get him into rallies," he said.

He also touched on the importance of the lead-up weeks in adjusting to the big-match atmosphere at the Indira Gandhi Stadium.

"I think there is a good centre over there and a big stadium there. We have a lot of people there. After our last one, we had a few weeks to adjust and change our mind," he said.

Sen will next face the USA's Garret Tan, who reached the second round with a 21-4, 21-15 win over Switzerland's Tobias Kuenzi.