It was everything sport should be. Testing, terrific. Long, lung-busting. Technical, tactical. Sweating, staring. Silent, serious. No sulking, only 70-shot rallies. Then maybe a 56-shot one. The 1.55m Japanese lunging backwards. The 1.79m Indian lunging low. For 110 minutes and 124 points. Quite simply the best stringed contest all year came at the women's final of the badminton World Championships in August. P.V. Sindhu fought, Nozomi Okuhara won, people cheered. So did girls everywhere. They'd found the rugged heroines that they need.