16 April,2023 08:08 AM IST | Mumbai | Sanjay Sharma
PV Sindhu during her loss to Carolina Marin in the opening round of the Malaysia Open earlier this year. Pic/Getty Images
Around this time last year, India stunned the sporting world by snatching the fabled Thomas Cup from under the noses of top-ranked countries like Malaysia, Denmark, Thailand and Japan.
Indian badminton enjoyed a fairy tale run in 2022, hammering all opposition at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, winning four gold medals, one silver and a bronze.
In individual events, Almora boy Lakshya Sen stormed into the Top 10, beating every leading singles player, including the almost unbeatable Victor Axelsen in semi-finals of the German Open. Sen also reached the final of the All England. HS Prannoy and former World No. 1 Kidambi Srikanth also played their part, reaching the World No. 10 and 11 ranks respectively.
After a long wait, PV Sindhu came good too, winning gold at the CWG. The All England last year also threw up two new shining lights in women's doubles stars Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand. Not to be left behind, the dynamic duo of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy also excelled, winning gold at the Thomas Cup besides a team gold and an individual gold at the CWG.
India became an emerging superpower in the sport and the players became household names.
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In 2023, a year that will witness qualification events for next year's Paris Olympics, one would have expected India's shuttlers to take off from where they finished in 2022. But this has only turned out to be wishful thinking so far.
In fact, Indian badminton is in dire straits with the start of this year being a disaster.
In the first six tournaments, including the recent Spanish Masters, the Indian pool of around 30 players, support staff and officials travelling across the circuit, could only manage to win one title - the Swiss Open. In fact, only one Indian, apart from the doubles teams of Chirag-Satwik and Treesa-Gayatri, was able to reach the semi-final stage. The most shocking display was at the All England, where, apart from Treesa-Gayatri, there was no India in action on Day Three.
Sen, India's leading men's singles player, isn't doing well. At the All England, he lost to Denmark's Anders Anderson in the second round. At the German Open, he lost in Round One to France's Christo Popov. At the Swiss Open, he was bundled out by Hong Kong's Lee Cheuk Yiu in Round One.
With Prannoy and Srikanth (both 30 years old) showing signs of tiredness and needing longer time to recover from tough matches, Sen, 22, needs to excel so that India's next generation of players like Mithun Manjunath, Kiran George and Priyanshu Rajawat look up to him. But that's not happening and this will lead to a vacuum in the men's singles department.
The situation in women's singles is worse. With Saina Nehwal walking into the sunset of her career, though refusing to accept it, India needs Sindhu to fire on all cylinders. But surprisingly, she has switched from her aggressive and fast-moving style to a highly defensive game, where she is trying to run down her opponents rather than demolishing them with the scorchers she is famous for. Consequently, she is losing to lesser known names like Thailand's Supanida Katethong (India Open) and Indonesians Kusuma Putri (Swiss Open) and Gregoria Tunjung (Spanish Masters). India's other women's singles players like Malvika Bansod, Akarshi Kashyap and Tasneem Mir did not win a single game at these tournaments.
In doubles, India have a pair each in the men's and women's categories, who are doing a good job, but ideally there should be at least three or four good pairs.
In women's singles, teenagers emerging from China, Japan, Korea and Indonesia are physically powerful and that makes them match-winners. In India, barring teenager Unnati Hooda, 15, there are few juniors who have the power. India needs to strengthen its women's singles players before they are thrust into the boiling cauldron of international badminton.
The author is a former India badminton player
