Last year was fantastic for Saina. She won three back to back titles in June with the Indian, Indonesian and Singapore Open Super Series titles. The win at the Hong Kong Open Super Series coupled with the Indian Open Commonwealth Games gold made 2010 a year to remember. No doubt that performance was going to be hard to replicate.
Yet a Swiss Open title this year and maintaining her ranking amongst the top 5 in the world is no mean feat.
What I found a little concerning though were her losses. Going by the record, she has lost to about 9 different opponents this year – of which only 3 were Chinese. The Chinese are known to be formidable and losing to them is understandable, but the losses to the other six lesser known and ranked opponents and those that she has beaten in the past needs to be analysed.
In my opinion there are a few things that could explain this.
At the outset I must mention that in this new scoring pattern of 21 points, the results this game has been throwing up have been very unpredictable. Therefore, a player playing even a single notch below par is likely to be punished.