Badminton fanatics who witnessed Friday’s men’s singles quarter-final clash between India’s Lakshya Sen and Chinese Taipei’s Chou Tien Chen would have found their cup of joy overflog at the manner in which two implacable gladiators — one, a 22-year-old highly talented, focused and single-minded individual, and the other an equally determined, wily veteran of the court — fought each other for an hour and a quarter, producing pulsating badminton of the highest quality.

Sen’s eventual 19-21, 21-15, 21-12 victory, in spite of his adverse 1-3 record in career meetings with the Taiwanese ace, was as much a result of his superior staying powers as it was of his newly discovered self-belief. The 12-year age advantage that the lad from Almora in Uttarakhand had over the poker-faced Taipei native weighed as much on the scales as the fact that Chou had heroically returned to the courts after a battle with a far more deadly adversary — colo-rectal cancer.