Champions receive grand welcome

K.Srikanth and Saina Nehwal

Seldom it is that such extravagant reception take place in our country especially for badminton. But it was truly deserved this year. With Saina ’s victory against the mighty Chinese and Shrikant Kidambi’s win over Super Dan and Chen Long were milestones for them as well as the sport. Shrikant created history by winning the China Super Series Premiere title. Everyone including the Indian National Badminton Coach, Pullela Gopichand had his doubts on the victory since Lin Dan is known for super comebacks and is hard to defeat. But the 21year old silenced him as well as his critics. He beat him in straight games 21-19,21-17.

Saina finally clinched a Super Series win after a long time in her career. With this, she became the first Non Chinese after almost a decade to win the China Open.

What next?

Macau Open

With the Macau Grand Prix starting this Tuesday,top players PV Sindhu, Saina Nehwal are eyeing the Gold Medal. In the Macau Open, Sindhu will take on Chinese Taipei’s Hsu Ya Ching.

Men’s teams will bank on Ajay Jayram, HS Prannoy, Sourabh Varma and Sai Praneeth. These players have emerged victorious and have been showing great potential lately.

What do we need to work on?

We have immense potential and a long way to go when it comes to our singles players whom we can also bank on when it comes to the upcoming Rio Olympics. But what about our doubles teams? We very clearly don’t have a strong enough doubles team in every category be it men’s, women’s or mixed. We only have Ashwini Ponappa and Jwala Gutta, but they have not been in form lately especially since their performance in the Uber Cup finals in Siri Fort, Delhi.

They definitely have a lot of coordination to work on. Apart from them we do not have any competitive doubles team and that is definitely where our coaches Gopichand and Madhumita Bisht can work on. They need to produce a more fearful and dreaded Indian team overall. The way our singles players have emerged is heroic, but again where are the teams? For example, big winners like China and Korea definitely are doing a great job in every field. Their players in each group are the best and often play against each other in the semifinals and the finals. Here is where we can learn immensely from the tactics, the mentality these teams apply.

When we have the talent then there must not be any stone left unturned. Whilst acing the singles group events, we must definitely start on with pairing our players for doubles and not suddenly putting up Saina and Sindhu together like in the previous Uber Cup Final doubles games . We must always have a spare ace badminton doubles team. This has never been the case for India right since the time Prakash Padukone or Gopichand played. We have probably never concentrated enough and worked with our Doubles teams. Since Ponappa /Gutta played along and won the Commonwealth Games, we have only concentrated on them and not put in much efforts to develop other teams like them.

League Games

With enormous opportunities, numerous tournaments, Indian Badminton League games etc, we can always put up doubles teams on a trial and error basis. Let players like Saina ,Sindhu ,Kashyap only concentrate on their singles games and develop either the existing players or give chances to newbies to come up and perform. This will undoubtedly take India to a whole new level in the game and pose a threat in the BWF Rankings. It’s time we break the records and stay consistent on the charts within the top 5 positions in both men’s and women’s rankings.

Junior Levels

It is also time we promote the sport on a widespread level in schools and colleges. Every school/college has a football /cricket team but do they have a badminton team? Do our youngsters know the basic racket brands, the difference racket makes, structure and criticalities of the same? Why does South East Asia rule badminton and other indoor games? We need to promote and motivate youngsters to take up more of such issues on a national platform.

For example do we even remember Aparna Popat or Prakash Padukone who have contributed to the sport to a level almost equivalent to that of Sachin Tendulkar.