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Syed Modi 2025: With 150-plus entries, will India shine?
With several big global names skipping the event, the draw is flatter than usual and the tournament’s drama will come from revival bids
This year’s Syed Modi India International Badminton Tournament 2025, which begins here on Tuesday, shapes up as a wide open Super 300, where battle-hardened Indian veterans, hungry youngsters and a scattered international contingent will all sense a rare chance to grab ranking points and a World Tour title.
With several big global names skipping the event, the draw is flatter than usual and the tournament’s drama will come from revival bids, generational shifts and doubles partnerships trying to make the leap from promising to proven. The first day of the event will see qualifying round matches.
In the men’s singles, HS Prannoy and Kidambi Srikanth sit at the heart of the storyline, both looking to arrest difficult seasons on home soil. Prannoy arrives as India’s senior spearhead despite a string of early exits in 2025, while Srikanth, a two-time Syed Modi champion, will lean on his comfort with the Lucknow conditions to try and turn nostalgic success into something more concrete.
Singapore’s Jia Heng Jason Teh leads the list, followed by India’s Ayush Shetty, with Prannoy, Kiran George and Srikanth clustered in the next band of seeds. That mix of a non‑traditional top seed, resurgent home players and mid-ranked internationals like Teh and Viren Nettasinghe gives the men’s draw the feel of a bracket where a single hot week could transform a career.
But in the women’s singles, without India’s own PV Sindhu, who ended her season early after defending this title last year, women’s singles becomes a stage for India’s next wave. Teenagers Tanvi Sharma, Anmol Kharb and Unnati Hooda headline the home challenge, carrying the expectation that at least one of them can turn domestic buzz into a deep World Tour run.
Internationally, the absence of a dense cluster of top-10 players means the women’s field is less about star power and more about match-ups between ambitious top-30 and top-40 shuttlers. For Indian youngsters, that translates into realistic quarter-final and semi-final targets, especially if they can ride the crowd and handle the pressure of being standard-bearers rather than surprise packets.
India’s big window is on the doubles side as Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, fresh from their Commonwealth Games bronze and strong recent form, shape as genuine favourites in women’s doubles. The women’s pair has a chance not just to win at home but to consolidate itself as a reliable medal threat across the World Tour, especially with several established Asian pairs missing from the entry list.
In the mixed doubles, Singapore’s Terry Hee and Jin Yujia, along with Thai star Sapsiree Taerattanachai, add substance to a draw otherwise rich in experimental Indian pairings and mid-tier international duos.
And for Indian combinations like Rohan Kapoor with Gadde Ruthvika or young pairings coming through qualifying, this thinner layer of top-five calibre teams turns the Modi tournament into a live audition for more regular spots at higher-tier events.
Across events, India is fielding a record 150-plus entries, reinforcing the sense that this edition is more about depth than marquee glamour. The top of the field may not be stacked with Olympic medallists, but that very thinness in superstar presence ensures that every round from the last-32 onward carries real jeopardy—and offers Indian badminton a perfect home platform to reshape its pecking order heading into 2026.
