The pair of Aihika Mukherjee and Stirta Mukherjee continued to create history by clinching the bronze medal after losing in the semi-finals of the Asian TT Championship in Astana, Kazakhstan on Sunday.
The duo could not react at all to Japan’s Miwa Harimoto and Miyu Kihara and lost in straight sets 0-3 (11-4, 11-9, 11-9). But their opponents were never pushy. Harimoto is a member of Japan’s silver medalist team at the 2024 Paris Olympics, and Kihara is a three-time world championship medalist. Aihika Stirta entered the match with confidence after defeating Harimoto and Kihara in the final of last year’s WTT Tunis Contender, but the Japanese duo has only improved in their respective matches over the past year. He seemed confident throughout.
At these championships, bronze medals were awarded to the losing team in the semi-finals, making them the first Indian women’s doubles pair to win a medal here.
Aihika and Stirta have repeatedly raised the bar for Indian women’s doubles. At last year’s Asian Games, she made history by winning the bronze medal, India’s first medal. And last year in Tunis, she became the first Indian to win the WTT Contender women’s doubles title.
Victory in Astana just reaffirmed that they can compete with the best, but the question will be what they need to do to reach the finals of a top-level tournament. . Their best performance this year has been reaching the round of 16 at both Singapore and Saudi Smash, but they need to improve their performance at WTT’s top tournaments if they are to aim for medals at the big tournaments.
But first you need to understand what works for you.
The 27-year-old Aihika’s strong defensive play slowed down the match and set the stage for Stilta’s powerful smash. Aihika uses an anti-spin rubber on the backhand that reverses spin. It is a difficult rubber to use because you need to control the ball. To reverse spin, you first need to measure the spin your opponent is putting on the ball.
What works well in doubles is that she can play close to the net and take away the pace of shots. The spin she puts on can confuse opponents, and even if her opponent makes a loose return, Stilta can finish the point with a powerful forehand.
That was actually their very successful game plan throughout, relying somewhat on how Ayhika could confuse their opponents and slow the game down.
Aihika’s coach Soumyadeep Roy said one of the reasons for Aihika’s success is because she can change shots with the same motion.
“She can hit the ball from the same height and with the same motion, but the opponent doesn’t know how the ball is going to spin or if it’s going to spin. It’s very difficult for the opponent to understand that.” he said.
The problem arises when a top player like world No. 7 Harimoto, who he faced in Sunday’s semifinals, can easily counter Stilta’s smashes.
So what happens?
Aihika does not always succeed in delaying the attack again, as Stilta’s forehand attack returns with even more force. Her return was met by a powerful shot from her opponent, and Stilta was just short of reaching it.
This is how the Japanese pair won most of the points on Sunday, and Aihika-Stilta will need to find a solution.
Roy said that the two have been working tirelessly and improving day by day since winning medals at the Asian Games.
“The question is always what Aihika and Srutiza can do to improve. You have to look at how much they have improved over the past year. Aihika has beaten the best players in the world and that is It has also affected Stilta. They are not afraid to work together and play against the top pairs. Going into this tournament, they were confident of winning a medal in doubles, and now they are already at the World Championships. “I’m thinking of a medal,” he said.
When asked what he needed to change to beat the top players, Roy said he always needed to improve physically and technically.
“Even the top players want to improve technically, so we will work on that. Sure, they need to improve physically to increase their reach, but overall, “I think we need to keep playing together to get bigger results,” he said.
