Ten Points Stolen: When Lakshya Sen Let Go of His Own Half-Court

Ten Points Stolen: When Lakshya Sen Let Go of His Own Half-Court

2 a.m., Binh Duong. The coffee had long gone cold, the desk lamp was still on, and on my screen Lakshya Sen had just stormed to a 5-1 lead over Loh Kean Yew in the opening game of a Round of 32 men's singles match at the Asian Games 2026. Ten minutes later, the scoreboard read 5-11. Not a single shot, not one botched serve — but ten straight points. Ten points stolen in the time it took me to stand up and pour another glass of water.

I have sat inside this trade for more than twenty years, watching countless badminton matches from press tribunes to the small screen in my own apartment. But this kind of collapse always leaves a feeling that is hard to name. People call it "losing form." I call it the moment a player drops his own half-court — and stands there watching his opponent pick it up.

Lakshya Sen entered the Asian Games 2026 as a TOPS Core athlete — part of India's specially funded elite group — and the world No. 14. His opponent, Loh Kean Yew, was ranked No. 13 and is a former world champion. On paper, that is a one-place gap. On court, it is the gap between someone who knows how to stay composed and someone who has not yet learned how.

This was the Round of 32. Under ordinary draw rules at a BWF World Tour event, two top-15 players almost never meet this early. But the Asian Games is not a pure professional tour stop — it is a multi-sport continental festival, where entry quotas are allocated by nation and region, and where seeding is not protected the way it is at commercial events. Sen and Loh met in Round 32, which meant that one of Asia's leading men's singles players was guaranteed to leave the tournament before it had truly warmed up.

Days earlier, Sen had helped India win team bronze. For any nation, that is a result to be proud of. For Sen personally, that team bronze was only half the story. A 2026 Commonwealth Games gold, a fourth-place finish at the Paris 2026 Olympics — he has touched the highest peaks of the individual game. But an individual Asian Games medal, the prize every Asian player covets, has always eluded him.

And then, just days after standing on the podium with his teammates, Sen walked onto court against Loh.

I rewatched the match three times. Not because there was anything technically spectacular about it — but because I wanted to understand how a top-15 player could lose ten straight points in a game he was leading 5-1.

The first game ended 12-21. In the second, Sen won 21-15 through sustained pressure — deep clears, decisive net approaches, a brand of badminton I still call "playing it real." In the decider, he clawed back from a deficit to level at 13-14, then let Loh pull away and lost 14-21. The final rally: Sen found the net.

People will look at the scoreline and say: a good match, tough luck for Sen. But look closer, and this is a lesson in error management at the decisive moments.

In elite badminton, the difference between winning and losing rarely lies in the hardest smash. It lies in how many times you push the shuttle long when the score is 18-17. Loh Kean Yew did not beat Sen with scorching smashes. He beat Sen by absorbing the fast starts, weathering the second-game fightback, and reasserting control in the decider. That is the instinct of a former world champion.

What is worth noting is that Loh's own error count in this match was not low. But his errors came at moments that did not matter — when he was already ahead, when the game was all but settled. Sen's errors came at the critical moments: the final net shot, the faulty serves while chasing, the shot-selection decisions in long rallies.

The match lasted 70 minutes. It was not a match Sen lost physically — it was a match he lost mentally in a handful of fleeting moments. I have sat in press rooms after matches like this, and I know how players describe it: "I knew what I was doing wrong, but I could not fix it in time."

There is one detail few people noticed. After losing ten straight points from 5-1 up, Sen still won the second game. That proves he had every technical and mental tool needed to flip the match back. But once he had flipped it, he could not hold it. This is the familiar problem of a player in transition — capable of brilliance in moments, not yet capable of brilliance across a whole match.

Sen's coaching team will recognise this. Because it is not a technical flaw. It is a pattern that anyone who has followed him in recent years can spot: explosive starts, dominant stretches, then unexplained lulls.

And here is where I want to say something many will not agree with.

People tend to frame losses like this with one word: "heartbreak." But I think that framing obscures something more important: losing in Round 32 to a No. 13 opponent is not a disaster. It is the outcome of a tournament structure that does not favour anyone.

Look at the road Sen walked. He was No. 14 in the world. He met No. 13 — a former world champion — in the very first round. Had the draw fallen differently, had he landed in another quarter, he might have reached the quarterfinals or semifinals. But the Asian Games does not protect seeds the way BWF World Tour events do. It is where national quotas, regional allocations, and scheduling intersect to manufacture early clashes no one wants.

I am not saying this to make excuses for Sen. I am saying it to put the question in its proper place: the question worth asking is not whether Sen is good enough — he has proven that with a Commonwealth Games gold and an Olympic fourth place. The question worth asking is whether the Asian badminton competition system is inadvertently creating "groups of death" far too early, forcing top players to eliminate each other before the tournament truly heats up.

This is something I have observed over many years in the trade, and it has never been fully resolved. At quota-heavy events like the Asian Games, the Olympics, or the SEA Games, two top-15 players meeting in Round 32 is an inevitable consequence of how entries are allocated — not the fault of the players.

I remember sitting in a press row at a regional championship once, watching a female player drawn against the defending champion in the first round. After the match, she smiled and told me: "I didn't lose because I'm weak, sir. I lost because of the draw." That sentence has stayed with me ever since. The court does not distinguish by gender — only the gaze distinguishes the players. And in this case, so does the way entries are allocated.

What Sen needs to do now is not try to hit harder or play faster. What he needs is to learn how to hold his own half-court from the opening rally — to hold the rhythm that gave him the 5-1 lead, to hold the focus that won him the second game. Great players are not the ones who never lose ten straight points. They are the ones who know how to stop it from happening twice.

For three weeks I heard the grass growing, and no one kicked a ball on it — I wrote that during the COVID days, when every court was shut and I had nothing to cling to. But a badminton court does not close on those who know what they must do next. It only closes on those who sit and watch an opponent pick up their half-court without learning a single lesson.

Sen stands on that exact line. He is talented enough to stay. He is just not yet cold enough to advance. A loss like this, for a still-young player, can be a loss. Or it can be the raw material for an entire decade ahead — depending on how he reads it back to himself in an empty video room.