All England Open: Satwik and Chirag’s defeat in round of 16 a reminder of how competitive men’s doubles badminton is, there are no guarantees
When last week Marcus Fernaldi Gideon announced his retirement, the tributes inevitably were centered around the domination that he and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo had on badminton’s BWF World Tour. The duo – known popularly around the world as ‘Minions’ – were an absolute men’s doubles tour de force. In what will go down as one of the greatest statistical anomalies in badminton, they somehow never managed to win an Olympics or World Championships medal (leave alone title) but on the circuit, they were incredibly consistent. They spent an astonishing 226 weeks at the top of the world rankings from 2017 to 2022.
On 20 September 2022, Gideon and Sukamuljo were world No 2 for the first time since 2017 as Japan’s Takuro Hoki/Yugo Kobayashi – world champions in 2021 – took over. Since then alone...