The All England Championships will see an All Indonesian men's final in 2024 after Jonatan Christie beat India's Lakshya Sen 21-12, 10-21, 21-15 to join Anthony Ginting (who beat France's Christo Popov 19-21, 21-5, 21-11) in the title clash.
In the second men's semi of the day, Christie started rapidly.. flying out of the blocks. spraying his trademark jump smashes across Lakshya's court (and body). It was close in the early stages, 6-6 as Lakshya kept up pace with the furious shot-making with some superb smashes of his own, but after opening up a four point lead at the mid-game break (11-7), Christie didn't really look back. Some delightful touches at the net and those smashes directed at the body kept Lakshya guessing and there was little he could do as he closed the game out with the first of his eight game points, taking it 21-12.
The second started similarly with a quick exchange of points but 3-2 for Lakshya became 6-3 and then Christie completely broke down. All his smashes went well wide, his drops found the net or drifted out of bounds, even his regulation clears were wayward. Those that remain inbounds were dispatched superbly by the alert Lakshya and from 6-3, he took an incredible 17-4 lead. A mini rally for Christie got him six more points but by then Lakshya had also drawn away, and he closed out the game 21-10. Considering how near-perfect Christie had been in the first game, this was a strange, sudden reversal that Lakshya took the utmost advantage of.
Ahead of the third game, the great Prakash Padukone, travelling with Lakshya (and PV Sindhu), was heard giving him some advice: "[Christie] will come out fast early on, you have to be prepared for it". And prepared he was as he went 2-0 up, and then 5-3 up... by now he was controlling the pace and intensity of the rallies and relying on a combination of his patience and Christie's wayward aggression to seize control of the game. Said control was short lived though as Christie changed up tactics to make it 6-6. He let go of the early smash-to-kill strategy that had won him the first game and lost him the second and adopted a more a patient approach, trusting his defence to open up gaps in Lakshya's armour. By the time 7-7 became 8-8 and then 10-8 in favour of Christie, he knew he had the upper hand. Going into the decisive mid-game break 11-9 up, he opened up his full array of strokes again -- one in particular, where he leaned back and hit an overhand inside-out smash that flew down the line at an angle that Lakshya neither predicted nor could do anything about. That smash made it 16-12 for Christie and from there it was routine as he made it 20-12. Despite Lakshya's late resistance saving three of those eight match points, Christie closed it out with a delicious drop angled cross-court.
Lakshya's loss, meanwhile, meant that was the end of India's participation in Birmingham. Zenia D'Cunha will have her analysis of how the country's athletes fared this week up on the site by Sunday morning, but until then, you can relive the exciting semifinal (includes bits from the superb Akane Yamaguchi vs An Se Young semifinal that happened before this one) right here with our blog (Please wait a few seconds for the blog to load. If it doesn't please click here):