Having made the finals of their last three HSBC BWF World Tour tournaments, the omens are bright for Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty at the start of the Olympic year. While they did falter in all three, their consistency has been remarkable in a category renowned for being the most competitive of all five.

Finishing second-best in three straight events did rankle, but they’ve learnt to temper their disappointment with a philosophical outlook.

“It takes a bit of time to come back after a loss,” admitted Shetty after the India Open final, when they were outplayed by world champions Kang Min Hyuk and Seo Seung Jae. “(But) we’ve always been players to not take too much out of wins; we celebrate in the evening and get back to work the next day. Similarly, when we lose a tournament, we feel bad that day, but next day we are back on court. We will keep our heads down, we will be back much stronger and convert that loss into a win at the next big event.”

The Indians head to the YONEX French Open 2024 as top seeds. Given the level they are at, they are likely to feature in the business end of the tournament they won in 2022.

The India Open loss was particularly grating, for they had the opportunity to beat the world champions in front of a full-house crowd; they missed out on that electric atmosphere in 2022 when they did win the title as the galleries were nearly empty due to COVID restrictions.

Rankireddy consoled himself with the thought that they could use the lessons they had learnt for bigger challenges ahead.

“I feel losing sometimes is better than winning all the time,” Rankireddy said.

“When it really matters it will come. We just need to hang in there. We played three finals, we lost three, it was very close in those matches. We could’ve kept calm in crucial situations.

“There are a lot of good things to take away. We are still hungry, we are not satisfied. Losing is better sometimes, it will give a lot of motivation. For me, losing the final will give motivation to make the crowd happy the next time.”

The Indians have been among the world’s best pairs for a few years now, and they’re constantly ironing out their shortcomings. Shetty reckons that, while both have attacking instincts, their defence has helped them evolve into a more complete package.

“You can’t have a single gameplan where you are attacking all the time,” said Shetty. “There are pairs that defend well and you won’t be able to last if you do that, so you need different facets as well. In the past two years we’ve worked a lot on our defence and we’ve been defending quite well. We can see the improvement in that aspect and that helped us at the Asian Games where the conditions were slow.”

Having finished the previous year by making the title round of China Masters 2023, the Indians never let the momentum drop as they continued to challenge for titles in Malaysia and India.

“In Malaysia we played 80 per cent attacking game, here (in India) the first few matches we kept attacking, then in the semifinals and finals in India we played more defence,” analysed Rankireddy.

“I feel there’s much more in our tank and we can play an all-round game. Mentally we are there, we didn’t give up easily, we have that hunger. That’s the biggest positive. Physically we can be much better. We both love to attack, so that’s why we get tired and get injured easily.”

As the Test Event for the Olympics, an encouraging result at the French Open will carry a lot of significance. Shetty had his sights on the French Open and the All England when he promised after the India Open setback:

“We’d never played back-to-back finals on consecutive weeks. The positive thing is we are consistent; the not-so-good thing is that we didn’t win. Obviously you can’t win everything. Our target is to win the big events. We just need to stick right there and eventually things will fall into place.”

Rankireddy/Shetty take on Malaysians Ong Yew Sin/Teo Ee Yi in the opening round of the YONEX French Open 2024.