Indian badminton in the past two years has seen many memorable moments. But the past 10 days will be a phase that every follower of the sport will remember for a very long time.
Heading into the Olympics, a lot was spoken about how this was to be Saina Nehwal’s moment of glory. and how she was going to change the colour of the medal that she won in London in 2012. But instead, newer heroes emerged out of the shadow of Saina, with PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth showing the world that India was no longer a ‘one player badminton nation’. Sindhu in particular made a lot of news by clinching the silver medal, much to the delight of every Indian who was glued to the television.
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Comparing between the two Indian female stars, who have achieved quite a bit in their careers at a fairly young age, can be very difficult. But the comparison is inevitable, even if it means trying to arrive at a conclusion far earlier than warranted. Every casual fan invariably asks whether Sindhu is better than Saina, so that’s what we are trying to address here.
Note: Only the three top badminton events – the World Championships, the Olympics and the All England Open – have been taken into consideration for the purpose of this discussion.
PV Sindhu
Prior to the Rio Olympics, inconsistency was a word that most associated with Sindhu.T here was never any doubt over her ability to play on the senior stage and challenge the best, but what she couldn’t do more regularly was beating the players at or below her level.
But during the course of this week, the Indian has shown that in the time away from the game she has been working very hard to ensure that she adds that quality to her game. Her newfound consistency was there for everyone to see when she beat everyone ranked below her and also three top 10 players back-to-back to reach the final, where she eventually won silver.
However, the Olympic medal is just another feather to an already very impressive CV. Like at the Olympics, the 21-year-old sparkled in the World Championships as well in 2013, winning the bronze medal. In the process she emulated Prakash Padukone as the only other Indian to win a singles medal at the event at the time. A year later, she repeated the feat in Copenhagen.
It is, however, at the All England Championships where Sindhu has some work to do. Her best performance is reaching the second round and this is one tournament where she will look to put in a much-improved performance in the years to come.
Sindhu in a nutshell
International debut: 2012
Silver medalist at 2016 Rio Olympics
Bronze medalist at the 2013 Guangzhou World Championships and 2014 Copenhagen World Championships.
Saina Nehwal
Every sport needs someone who could become a pioneer for the others to look up to. Padukone was once such personality who set that benchmark in 1980, and we saw the likes of Pullela Gopichand and Aparna Popat emerge out of his legacy.
For this present generation, that benchmark has been set by Saina Nehwal. In her decade long career the Hyderabadi has achieved as much as any Indian fan could have hoped for, making sure that badminton remains a widely-followed sport in the country.
Saina first burst on to the scene in 2006 but made a big impression in 2008, when she reached the quarterfinals at the Beijing Olympics. However, hers and Indian badminton’s crowning glory came at the London edition of the Games, four years later, when she became the first Indian shuttler to win a medal at an Olympics, clinching the bronze in front of a packed Wembley arena.
Unlike Sindhu, the medals at the World Championships eluded Saina for a while. She repeatedly fell in the Round 3 stage of the competition for several years, before eventually winning the silver medal last year, losing to Carolina Marin in the final.
2015 was an also a year when Saina became the first Indian women’s singles shuttler to reach the final at the All England Championships, and that led to her reaching the top of the world rankings.
Thanks to injuries that played a major part in her slight downslide in the past 12-15 months, Saina couldn’t replicate her showing from 2012 at the 2016 Rio Olympics, crashing out in the Group stage. One of the reasons for her loss was later revealed to be an injury that she had sustained just before leaving for Brazil.
Saina is only 26 and has shown that at her best she can defeat any opponent who comes in her way. That ‘best’ is something that we perhaps need to wait for some time though, since earlier today morning (20th August), she underwent surgery to her right knee and hence could be out from the game for months.
But Saina surely is far from finished, and one can definitely expect another comeback from her in the weeks to come.
Saina in a nutshell
International debut: 2006
Bronze at the 2012 London Olympics
Runner-up at the 2015 All England Championships
Silver at the 2015 Jakarta World Championships
Sindhu’s and Saina’s best performances at all 3 events
| Competition | PV Sindhu | Saina Nehwal |
| Olympics | Silver medalist Women’s Singles Rio 2016 | Bronze medalist Women’s Singles London 2012 |
| All England Championships | Round 2 in 2014 | Silver medalist Women’s Singles in 2015 |
| World Championships | Two-time Bronze medalist Women’s Singles in 2013 and 2014 | Silver medalist Women’s Singles in 2015 |
Conclusion: The above table indicates that both players have excelled on the world stage, but Saina, thanks to the All England final, is marginally ahead of Sindhu at the moment. But barring that, there is very little to separate the two in terms of their performance on the world stage.
Another thing to consider, and something that we haven’t touched upon in detail here, is rankings. Sindhu has reached as high as 9th during her career whereas Saina was number 1 last year for a brief period, which again puts the elder star at a higher pedestal.
But if Sindhu can continue to play the way she did at Rio, there’s no reason why she can’t climb the charts soon and perhaps emulate Saina by going top of the rankings. For now, however, it is celebration time for her as it is for the whole of India, who eagerly anticipate the return of the champion back home.
