Vimal Kumar once had a peculiar conversation about God with young shuttler Meiraba Luwang Maisnam, made trickier by God’s inputs on the matter not being on record.
Vimal had known Meiraba since the Manipuri boy arrived at Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy at age 11. The precocious pre-teen was known as a happy, boisterous child who loved to make everyone around him laugh, with his mimicry and assorted antics. He also played strokes freely and was tipped for greater things, before the Covid pandemic struck. Meiraba emerged from it deeply withdrawn. “He suddenly became very religious and would disappear to pray all the time,” Vimal recalls. Respectful towards his faith, Vimal who understood the boy and badminton better than his silent beliefs, would tell him, “You don’t need to go all quiet. All that is not required. If you do your homework (train), God will come and help you.”
Meiraba nodded and privately began to open up again, at least to his coaches.
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This week, the 21-year-old – who started as a qualifier at Thailand Open – registered two consecutive main draw wins. The first over India star, HS Prannoy and then a 21-14, 22-20 stomp against upcoming Dane, Mads Christophersen on Thursday to make his first ever Super 500 quarterfinal. “In the last three months, he’s changed his approach, and is looking more relaxed and with the right thinking process, so I’m pleased with today’s win, for his confidence. He needed this breakthrough. Somewhere he had started believing ‘I have to be alone. I’ve to be always focussed.’ People would say he’s not focussed, he’s too lazy. But I think he’s become too serious now! And he was never lazy. Those are misconceptions,” Vimal explains.
Mildly maligned, hugely misunderstood in recent years as someone wasting away his considerable talent, Meiraba’s first impression – and lasting one for Vimal – was altogether different. The coach says he was always a ‘physical specimen’ whom he saw in Chinese Chen Long’s mould. “Light upper body, strong legs – calf, quadriceps, hamstring. Good posture and balance. He adapted the defensive style like Chen Long, and is very steady in defense,” the coach says.
Meiraba has excellent tosses to keep a rally going, is agile and can run plenty. He maintains good lengths defensively, and his under-arm lifts and lobs send opponents to back of the court. “He used to play very freely and approached the court positively. Though moody, he was very funny as a child and made us laugh. He would sit in the middle of the dorm, and mimic everyone. He made funny faces and back then had long hair which he would make twitch with his nose,” Vimal recalls.
Meiraba Maisnam after he won the under-13 National title. (Special Arrangement)
Meiraba would win the national sub-junior title within 10 months of reaching Bangalore, and subsequently won most junior crowns. He was tipped to gallop alongside Lakshya Sen, but somehow the international results didn’t fetch up and his ranking flatlined as the transition to seniors got challenging.
“We could see him getting restless. He had coaches here, OGQ backs him, but he started believing that support wasn’t enough. Maybe he thought he should train abroad. He got restless, one day he wanted to change his grip, another day he thought racquet wasn’t hitting shuttle as he wanted and nothing was working. He took on too much pressure on himself, and he wouldn’t talk,” Vimal recalls. “He wasn’t lazy, he started overthinking.”
The spiral got real when while trying to speed up his ranking rise, he played in too many low-grade tournaments, after over-training. “If you told him to go do meditation or yoga or just take time off, he just couldn’t. He thought even if he missed training for one day, he would fall behind. So it was play, play, train, train which wasn’t working for him. He went into a shell,” Vimal recalls.
In the last three months, Meiraba would return to winning ways, picking up the All Indian ranking title last month. Known to often beat Lakshya Sen in training, his game is now translating onto the circuit.
Moody and short-tempered on court, it was his self-punishing pursuit of perfection that hindered him, PPBA coach Sagar Chopda says: “He was trying too hard to be perfect. A drop had to land a certain way, a dribble had to be just right. Or he would get angry. It was tough to work with him because you didn’t know which Meiraba would land up for a session, and which one would take the court. But within 30 seconds of him getting angry, he would’ve calmed down and play coolly.”
His game though remains eclipsed by his defense-centric shot decisions. In truth, Meiraba has a proper hard hit, a down-the-line smash, though he confounds coaches by sticking to soft-strokes, prolonging rallies. “He’s developed a good smash, and has a good punch, but uses it very rarely in a match. He gets bogged down if his smashes are returned, as they will be internationally, and chooses to keep shuttle in play. He needs to create opportunities and finish points. He’s got good fitness but doesn’t believe in it. But he has a very good net game, and you never know against (world champ) Kunlavut on Friday. Meiraba has the game,” Vimal says.
At Chinese Taipei last year, he was placed well against Hong Kong’s Ang Ka Long Angus, but went into passive mode. Chopda believes he will need to switch his game up in fast conditions, where you can’t rely on defense solely, and need to attack and up the pace with hard hits. On Thailand’s slowish courts that suit him though, Meiraba will love to make life properly miserable for Kunlavut ‘View’ Vitidsarn.
