He was ranked 120 odd then, and it hadn’t been a good year of results. The last time he cried was soon after Covid when his funders for 4 years from 2016 to 2020 decided to stop sponsoring him. It was a brutal loss, but four months on he figured out a means to beat him in straight two sets at Sydney last week. He played former world champion Loh at the German Open in March, and ran out of fuel because the Singaporean is very fast. Mithun has learnt the art of figuring it out and fighting back. I’ll fight every match,” assures the late bloomer at 25, who beat World No.7 Loh Kean Yew, at Sydney.ĪLSO READ | Inside the Gopichand and Padukone badminton factories, laying foundation for India’s success
“I know what life is, I’ve seen many downs. And coming down with fever, because he and his mother, travelling with him for a string of tournaments, couldn’t afford an AC room at a hotel, or even an accommodation with a ceiling fan.
Life at its direst for him, he recalls, was sleeping the night before an under-10 final on a Chennai terrace, after pouring a bucket of cold water on himself to allay the punishing heat. I fought well even when down,” Mithun says of the 21-13, 12-21, 21-19 loss. And it is not when trolls said he had bottled it again after a line misjudgment at 19-19 in the decider, when he chose to leave the shuttle last week and it fell in, playing Malaysian Lee Zii Jia, at the Australia Open Super 500. Mithun Manjunath knows what life at its direst looks like.
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