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Who next after Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu?
The unprecedented success of PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal made India a force to reckon with at the highest levels of the game.
For years now, two names have dominated headlines in Indian badminton. Mentored by former All England champion Pullela Gopichand, Saina Nehwal pioneered India’s rise in international badminton around a decade back and was joined at the top by PV Sindhu few years later.
The unprecedented success of Sindhu and Nehwal made India a force to reckon with at the highest levels of the game. The two women inspired more success too, fostering a competitive culture that made many of their male contemporaries—like the 2014 Commonwealth Games champion Parupalli Kashyap (who is also Nehwal’s husband), and Kidambi Srikanth, who was briefly the world No 1 last year—touch new milestones.
It was only natural to assume that more badminton stars will follow in Nehwal and Sindhu’s footsteps in the women’s game. This has not happened.
A look at the world rankings tells a story. While Nehwal and Sindhu continue to maintain their status as top-10 players in women’s singles, the next best Indians are Mughda Agrey and Rituparna Das at No 62 and 64 respectively, with five more in the 80s and 90s.
Compare this to men’s singles, where as many as seven Indians are in the top-50 (Srikanth in top 10). In addition, there is junior world No 2 Lakshya Sen, who is already nearing the top-50 in seniors. There is a second line of players when it comes to the men, moving through the ranks.
“India has the luxury of Saina being in her late 20s and Sindhu in her mid 20s, so they have got many good years,” says Danish legend Morten Frost, who has been working with the Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy as a consulting coach. “It is all about coaches, the set-up, and BAI (Badminton Association of India) or whoever is in-charge, to build the next generation after these two players.”
The four-time All England champion cites the example of England and Sweden, where the standard of the sport has dropped dramatically over the past 20-25 years, from when they used to be badminton powerhouses in the 1970s and 80s.
“It is always very important to keep the feeding chain, keeping it going the whole time. Should that eventually be broken, it might not be so easy to comeback. So it is very important to maintain it,” says Frost.
A comparison that cuts even closer home is to Danish badminton. The only non-Asian powerhouse remaining in the sport has plenty of men’s singles players in the top 25, but has seen a dramatic drop in women’s singles since their three-time All England winner Tine Baun retired in 2013. Their top doubles pairs in all three categories, who regularly won medals at the Olympics or World Championships, have also already retired or are in the twilight of their careers.
“We have been strong in men’s singles and doubles for some decades. In women’s and mixed doubles... it was based on very few players,” says Frost. “The problem is that those few players have stopped and the gap is massive behind them. Too little attention has been paid to the next generation and now we are suffering the consequences.”
Chief national coach Gopichand didn’t mince words when asked about the gap.
“We haven’t had a programme for the younger group. We have not given any of the younger players exposure,” he says. “The transition between junior to senior, we haven’t really done anything for them.”
Though some rising players like Rituparna Das and G Ruthvika Shivani began well, they have not been able to raise their games beyond winning some lower tier Badminton World Federation (BWF) tournaments.
Both the shuttlers are 22. By this age Nehwal had already won the world junior championship, a Commonwealth Games gold and multiple Superseries tournaments. She also claimed the Olympic bronze at 23. Sindhu had already claimed an Olympic silver and three World Championship medals among several other titles on the BWF World Tour at the same age.
“Today badminton is a very physical sport. It depends on whether physically they are like Nehwal or Sindhu, whether they can take the blow. You need to absorb a lot, and their bodies could not take it,” says U Vimal Kumar, former national coach and now chief coach at the Prakash Padukone Academy.
Kumar says that one of the main reasons for the lack of a depth of talent is the lack of quality academies in India. In a country this vast, there are only two truly world class centres—Gopichand’s academy in Hyderabad and Padukone’s in Bengaluru.
“Everybody has been coming to the south but we need more good centres, especially in the north, I have been saying this for 10 years,” Kumar says. “Even in the east or northeast, we need a good backup (of players) from these regions.”
Kumar echoes Gopichand in saying that the badminton set-up in the country gives little importance to junior players; while top players get plenty of financial aid and training help, there is scant support for age-group players.
“That gap needs to be bridged. The government cannot do everything, so associations need to chip in with government support to bring up the level,” Kumar says. “BAI has started supporting some centres, investing money. That is the mindset we need to have—spending money (on the second line of players). If you have a state that plays a lot of badminton, support them with good coaching programmes, initiatives from the state, introduce players to the international circuit by 15 or 16.”
