Trisa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand begin their campaign at the World Tour Finals by making their debut at the season-ending event starting on Wednesday. They are the only Indians to qualify this year.
Although the 21-year-old duo have 5 top 10 scalps in 2024, three back-to-back matches against the world’s top 10 will be their biggest challenge. Here’s how the stats stack up, according to data maintained by Statminton.
Open the group
Trisa-Gayatri appears in a relatively lightly contested group of two in the World Tour Finals, alongside world No. 1 Liu-Tan, world No. 4 Matsuyama-Shida and world No. 6 Tan-Thinah. While Liu-Tan boast six titles – the most for any WD pair in Hangzhou, the entire Pool A had just eight this season compared to Group B’s 12 including Paris Olympic champion Chen-Jia. Liu-Tan has one Super 1000, and two Super 750s in Group A, while Olympic wins in Group B, two Super 1000s for Bak-Li and three Super 750 wins for Iwanaga-Nakanishi and Chen-Jia.
13th-ranked Trisha-Gayatri, with just one Super 300 title, will fancy their chances of an upset, though it will be difficult to beat the top six in the richest event of the year.
A Taste of Marathon
An interesting Statminton number is the longest streak, and the Indians have the shortest streak of 8 of the bunch at 79 minutes. Malaysian Tan-Thinah is particularly a master of long, drawn-out matches with their marathon reaching 102 minutes. year, while Liu-Tan recently won only 81 minutes humdinger despite his aggressive game.
All pairs in the other groups (Iwanaga-Nakanishi, Beck-Lee, Kusuma-Prativi and Chen-Jia) have battled over 85 minutes. And the women’s doubles remains a test of endurance, with the Indians yet again to be tested. They have adopted a strategy of how to close the endurance fight but it doesn’t always work, and wringers are inevitable in WD.
Third set decision makers, a challenge
Out of the 8 qualified at the end of the year, Trisha-Gayatri has a bottom 3 in rubber match winning percentage – winning the decider after only 54.55% of the times. While Chinese Olympic champion Chen-Jia bossed the judges an astounding 85.71% of the time, Liu-Tan is next best with 77.78%.
While Trisa-Gayatri pulling Liu-Tan to the jury will be considered remarkable, it ultimately counts who wins. New Indonesian Kusuma-Pratiwi also has a healthy tally of 70% wins in the decider, while Japan’s Iwanaga-Nakanishi is on 64.29%.
However, Trisa-Gayatri will take hope from the relative numbers of other couples in their group, to continue the fight. Tan-Thinah does not have a good record in judging, at 52.94%, followed by Matsuyama-Shida at 57.89%.
However, after losing the last set to Indonesia’s Matsumoto-Nagahari 19-21 and not being able to push the judges against Liu-Tan in Hong Kong, the ranking will take place. Their third set loss to Taiwanese Hsei-Hung also signaled a run out of steam, and is the biggest KRA for 2025 for the young Indians.
While Jwala Gutta – V Diju were India’s first World Tour finalists 15 years ago, women’s doubles is notoriously difficult at the end of the year. Still, Trisa-Gayatri will aim to bring some excitement to the show.