The flying shuttle: How Pullela Gopichand transformed badminton in India
It’s been 19 years since he began coaching a new generation of players, and coaches. India now occupies top slots, tunes in, and plays to win.
In 2001, at the All-England badminton championships, a gangly, determined Indian shuttler, known on the circuit but below the radar of the rest of the country, decided to make his presence felt. The triumph at Birmingham, the first for an Indian since Prakash Padukone in 1980, launched Pullela Gopichand into the national consciousness.
At 28, he had finally made it. And India could not get enough of him for a while — demands for personal appearances, requests for interviews, and offers of endorsements started flowing thick and fast. But the country learnt soon enough that this was a different kind of champion. In 2002, when Coca Cola, the I’ve-made-it signing for any athlete at the time, came calling with a lucrative deal, Gopichand turned them down. Sugary drinks are not good for children, he said, and he could not bring himself to promote them at any price.
This was a sign that Gopichand, still only 29, was looking to give back. It was also a sign that he was driven by his own ideas of right and wrong, and wouldn’t compromise on them.
So when he decided to jump into coaching in 2004, in the twilight of his career, one knew that this wasn’t going to be a run-of-the-mill attempt. He wasn’t going to be looking for mere sustenance. He had something bigger on his mind: he wanted players to challenge the Chinese, and then the world.
Today, if Indian badminton has reached the levels it has — six men’s, four women’s, and three men’s doubles players in the Top 50 — its miraculous journey began with Gopi. And not just with his victory at the All-England, but with his determination and desire to give something back.
First steps
Indian players taking on the world consistently seemed an impossible quest at the time. Padukone’s exploits were a fading memory. Gopi himself was on the verge of quitting the sport due to injuries. Aparna Popat, who was once ranked World No.16, failed to challenge for the big titles. The cupboard seemed bare.
Gopi started his foray into coaching by making his way to the camp of SM Arif in Hyderabad, and began offering advice to younger players of his own accord. He didn’t charge any fees. He just wanted to find players he could hone into champions.
Over the next year, he picked up the first batch of youngsters, all little-known at the time — Saina Nehwal, Sai Praneeth, Guru Saidutt, PV Sindhu and Parupalli Kashyap — on “gut feel and willingness to work”. One of the qualities is a simple metric for a player of his class: the quality of shot, the way they moved, their thought process. The other is an intangible, centered on perseverance, because Gopichand believed that talent alone wasn’t enough.
When these children (they were all between the ages of 10 and 14) and their parents came to him, he didn’t talk about how much money it would take. Instead, he spoke to them about his method and how things had to be done his way. They were welcome aboard only if they agreed to abide by his rules. It was here that his All-England title helped. Everyone wanted a piece of the magic. They at least wanted to try.
“It is all about the gut feeling and willingness to work hard,” Gopichand told HT when he was asked how he picks his players. “My philosophy of coaching hasn’t changed over the years. I firmly believe that it’s important to maintain discipline and push the player in the initial stages. Once they clear the orbit, then some concession can be given.”
He added: “I don’t know any other way. I have produced players in this way only. If anyone produces players with a different method then I will learn from it. Probably only Chirag (Shetty) and Satwik (Rankireddy) developed differently. But then they are extremely mature individuals.”
Finding Saina
Back then, at the start of his coaching stint, Gopi needed the right player at the right time. In that mentor-mentee sense, Saina and Gopi were made for each other. And if Indian badminton had to move ahead quickly, both needed to shine.
The bond between the two was built on Saina’s ability to push her physical limits during training. As long as Gopi didn’t ask her to stop, she would keep going. Neither liked to accept defeat. Neither liked to give up.
“Saina was hungry,” said Gopichand, who made the player his project. “She had a thirst for success and I had a point to prove. She would never say no to training — it didn’t matter what time of the day it was. In that sense, she was the perfect fit.”
By the time Saina joined the new Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy in 2005, she was already on her way up, but she needed a push in the right direction. Aparna Popat had dominated Indian badminton by winning eight straight senior national titles; now this 15-year-old stepped up to beat the senior pro and win the Asian Satellite tournament in October 2005.
That first international win gave Saina and Gopichand even more confidence in their method. They were on to something. It was a simple, repeatable mantra: good training, good fitness, and good food.
The titles then started to pile up. In 2006, Saina won the Philippines Open; in 2008, the Chinese Taipei Open. In 2009, the Indonesia Open. With each title, she and Gopichand were breaking new ground.
By 2010, Saina was ranked second in the world. The 15-year-old Sindhu was the national badminton sub-junior champion and world junior number five. And Kashyap was ranked 25th in the world among the men. There was a buzz around the players, around India, and around the Gopichand academy. Just what were they doing there?
Gopichand’s coaching philosophy has been significantly shaped by the Chinese coaching system, and by his time at the Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy and in the German League. It has also been shaped by what worked for him.
“There was no systematic approach of controlling training, sleep (in the years before he took up coaching). It was seen as dictatorial,” he said. But it needed to be done. So he decided to set a system in place.
Top players typically live at the Gopichand academy (set up in Hyderabad in 2004) and national camps have typically been held there since 2008. At the academy, players need written permission to leave the premises on weekdays. Mobile phones and other devices taken from them at their curfew hour of 9 pm.
In the early years, he would sometimes drop in from his home nearby for a surprise check. It wasn’t the military but it was close. Closets were checked for chocolates or other disallowed food items. Fussy eaters would have their servings weighed. It was like nothing India had ever seen before.
The big picture
At the same time, Gopichand wasn’t just about the results. He wanted to change Indian badminton from the ground up. He wanted more people to play badminton (even if just as a hobby — he believes that when more people play, some will rise to the competitive level, and from there some as elite athletes). He wanted more coaches at the grassroots level to ensure that the basics were sound. And he wanted professionalism.
It is this big-picture outlook that sets him apart from any other coach India has ever seen. For him, it wasn’t about making one champion. It was about changing the culture altogether.
To reach his goal, he acknowledged that training alone wouldn’t help. India needed to host elite international events. So he organised the India Open Grand Prix Gold in 2008 and 2009 and the BWF World Championships in 2009. He now hosts All India Rankings, a Junior International, and an International Challenge meet at his academy each year.
Gopichand also understood that if India wanted to consistently compete at the highest level, the pipeline had to be bigger. He couldn’t just pick and choose talents and nurture them all at one academy. They needed to come from across the country.
“A culture of sport is what is important,” he says. “Medals are not really the benchmark to decide whether you are a sporting nation. For me, to see a lot of young kids play sport in the true spirit of sport is what is important. A byproduct of it can be the medals that we win, which could add to the pride of the nation.”
It was this approach that allowed him to succeed where so many other athletes failed.
The story continues
Under his mentorship, Saina has become the only Indian woman to be ranked World No. 1. Between them, Sindhu and Saina have won one silver and two bronze medals at the Olympics. Kidambi Srikanth has become only the second Indian male after Prakash Padukone to be ranked World No. 1. And the Indian men’s team has created history by winning the 2022 Thomas Cup.
Success is the fuel any sport needs to capture a nation’s consciousness, and badminton has delivered on this front with regularity. Since 2011, India have won a medal at every World Championships. Before 2011, India’s only medal had come in 1983 with Padukone winning a bronze.
Sindhu’s success at the Olympics and Worlds made her a household name and ensured that, as Saina was fading, India found a new star.
If this isn’t change, then what is?
Gopichand had a vision when he first started out and few can argue that it hasn’t already become reality. He was all-in right from the start and the sheer consistency of results define his success in a way no flash-in-the-pan can.
It has now been 17 years since he took charge as chief national coach and some say his drive to push players has diminished over the years. He now wears many hats; he is an administrator and entrepreneur, member of various government committees. But the system he put in place holds.
Players are coached and trained, supported, mentored and pushed. Among the youngest stars to emerge recently from the academy is Satwiksairaj Rankireddy who, with his doubles partner Chirag Shetty, makes up the second-highest-ranked men’s badminton pair in the world.
He has also lately been focusing on emerging star Priyanshu Rajawat, who was on the team that won the 2022 Thomas Cup. He has been monitoring training sessions and working on sponsorship deals for the 21-year-old. And he has been grooming next-generation coaches such as Pantawane and Arun Vishnu.
“As a player, you want things early and in a certain way. You end up getting frustrated,” says 2014 Commonwealth Games champion Parupalli Kashyap, 36. “Gopi Sir doesn’t indulge unreasonable dreams,” he adds. “He is blunt, but you can trust him to be honest. If he isn’t elated at wins, it’s because he wants players to remember where the bar is.”
This creates champions, and the pull is understandable. Pullela Gopichand’s academy continues to expand but its methods remain largely unchanged. After all, why tinker with what’s working?
(Abhijeet Kulkarni is the author of The Gopichand Factor: The Rise and Rise of Indian Badminton)
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