How PV Sindhu can get back her winning touch

The recent release of BWF World rankings saw Indian shuttler PV Sindhu falling out of the top 5 in Women's singles rankings. Since winning the Asian Games silver medal, Sindhu's results have only gone down. PV Sindhu, as a player, is known for her consistency but her recent performances clearly do not justify her as a consistent player. The reason behind this is very obvious that her game has become very much predictable.

She is being trained to play long rallies just like the Japanese players but she definitely doesn't possess the kind of natural skills that the Japanese players such as Nozomi Okuhara and Akane Yamaguchi do. In her recent back-to-back losses to He Bingjiao of China, it was clearly visible that Sindhu was not able to adjust to the deceptions and sharp attacks of the Chinese-born player and, for earning every single point, she was made to play very long rallies.

With the kind of revolution that Tai Tzu Ying has brought in women's singles with her deceptive play, it seems necessary that every player should possess the same talent so that they can cut the long rallies, save their energy and win some points easily.

No doubt Gopichand is the reason for whatever Sindhu has achieved till date. But just like her coaches, everyone knows that she can win a gold medal. That will be possible only when she will be able to have a personal coach of her own who can focus only on her matches. With Gopichand coaching players such as PV Sindhu, Saina Nehwal, Kidambi Srikanth, H S Prannoy, B Sai Praneeth, Sameer Verma along with a lot of other senior and junior players, it is obvious that to give personal attention to each of these players is not possible for one human being, no matter how many assistant coaches one manages to appoint.

In 2014, Saina Nehwal parted ways from Pullella Gopichand citing that, "Gopichand didn't have enough time for her". In three years under Vimal Kumar's coaching, she achieved some of the best results of her career. Now that Saina is back to the Gopichand Academy, her good results have started coming because of her fiancé Parupalli Kashyap keeping a very close eye on her game .

In 2018 Indian players have failed to win any big World Tour event. PV Sindhu, despite making the Asian Games and the World Championships finals, has failed to win even a single title this year .

As we all know, Pullella Gopichand is the Chief National Coach of Badminton in India and he also runs a badminton academy of his own. So it is high time that sports ministry looked into this matter and tried to provide coaches from foreign countries so that the current elite group of Indian badminton can achieve what they are actually capable of.