Happy birthday, PV Sindhu: India's reigning shuttle queen

Pusarla Venkata Sindhu, commonly known as PV Sindhu was born on July 5th 1995, in Hyderabad. Both her parents were volleyball players and in her childhood, she also tried her hands at volleyball.

But Pullela Gopichand's victory at All England championship in 2001, inspired her to take up badminton as a career. Gopichand also saw a spark in Sindhu and mentored her, which resulted in Sindhu achieving various firsts for our country. Aged only 24 Sindhu had already achieved various milestones at the international level and is one of India's brightest badminton players. In this article, we take a look all her illustrious achievements so far.

A brief timeline

¶ She was ranked as high as number three in BWF junior rankings.

¶ In 2010, Sindhu won a silver medal at the Iran Fajr International Badminton challenge and had managed to climb into the top 20 of women's singles ranking by the age of 17.

¶ In 2013, she announced her arrival at the big stage when she defeated two top Chinese shutters to eventually win an elusive bronze medal at the World Championships. With this, she became the first female player from India to win a medal for the country at the World championship.

¶ In 2014, she again won bronze at the World Championships. With this, she became the only player from India to have won two back-to-back medals at the World Championships. In the same year, she also won a bronze medal at Glasgow Commonwealth games.

¶ In 2015, she reached her first ever superseries final at the Denmark superseries eventually losing to Li Xuerui.

¶ 2016 was a remarkable year for PV Sindhu as she reached the finals of the Rio Olympics. She defeated many higher-ranked opponents en route to her silver medal-winning performance in the tournament. She didn't win gold on that day but she won millions of hearts across the world. In the same year, she defeated Sun Yu in the finals of China Open to claim her first ever Superseries title.

¶ In 2017, she defeated Carolina Marin in the finals of India Open. She also won a Silver medal at the world championship in the same year.

¶ In 2018, she reached the finals of the World Championships for the second consecutive year but again she lost in finals and settled for the silver medal. Many people started calling her a choker due to her loses in the finals of various big events. But she proved everyone wrong when she became the first-ever player from India to win gold at the BWF world tour finals. She also won silver at the 2018 Asian Games.

¶ She has been given Arjuna award, Padma Shri, and Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award by the Indian government.

With such a list of achievements, we from Sportskeeda wish her a very happy birthday and best wishes for the future.