Indian badminton poor show continues; why is the existing system failing to produce the next Sindhus? » FirstSportz

India exited from the Denmark Open Tremendous 1000 badminton match with a naked haul after final hopes PV Sindhu misplaced her quarterfinal match and Sameer Verma retired halfway on Friday. India’s marketing campaign in Odense has been below par.

PV Sindhu, who returned to play at Denmark Open since profitable the bronze medal on the Tokyo Olympics in August, suffered a straight-game defeat to world No. 8 and runner up, AN Se-young, South Korea’s 19-year-old rising shuttler. It was Sindhu’s second defeat to Se-young on the Denmark Open, she was unmatchable for the South Korean.

World No. 28 Verma, however, returned empty-handed after inflicting a shock defeat on Denmark’s world No. 3 Anders Antonsen. Regardless of Lakshya Sen dropping his quarterfinal match towards reigning Olympic champion Viktor Axelsen in straight video games, he stays Indian badminton’s solely brilliant prospect. Sen had completed runners-up on the Dutch Open 2021, dropping the ultimate to Singapore’s Loh Kean Yew.

The place do India’s star shuttlers stand now?

In all of the disciplines, on the Odense Sports activities Park, India has had a dismal run. Earlier, London Olympics medallist Saina Nehwal, 31, who had retired halfway via her first match at Uber Cup Ultimate as a consequence of a groin harm, couldn’t match Japan’s world No. 20 Aya Ohori and misplaced 21-16, 21-14 within the opening spherical. Within the meantime, Saina’s husband Parupalli Kashyap, now 35, retired after being 0-3 down towards Taiwan’s Chou Tien-Chen.

HS Prannoy and World Championships bronze medallist B Sai Praneeth too made a first-round exit. Each Prannoy and Praneeth misplaced their respective matches by straight video games. India’s efficiency within the not too long ago concluded Thomas and Uber Cup has not been pleasing, both.

At each males’s and girls’s workforce championships, India made an inglorious exit, dropping the quarterfinals to China. Within the Sudirman Cup, Japan handed India a 5-0 defeat within the first spherical.

Other than Sindhu’s Tokyo Olympics bronze and World Championship gold and males’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty’s inspiring efficiency in Tokyo 2020, India has nothing particular to talk of of their kitty. Within the combined doubles, Satwik and Ashwini’s skilled fingers couldn’t yield any results of significance. In girls’s doubles, too, Ashwini and N Sikki Reddy’s pair doesn’t present a flash of fireside.

Current Present

Within the Tokyo Olympics, concluded in August, India had illustration solely in three occasions – girls’s and males’s singles and males’s doubles. It was the primary time that India didn’t have any illustration in girls’s doubles. In combined doubles, because the 2012 London Olympics, when Jwala Gutta and V Diju represented India within the Olympics for the primary time, no Indians may qualify for the showpiece occasion.

The very fact is that Sindhu in girls’s singles, Satwiksairaj and Chirag Shetty in males’s doubles and Lakshya Sen in males’s singles are the one few brilliant prospects, India has at current. With the variety of high quality gamers on the decline, Indian badminton has hit a nadir. Although Dhruv Kapila and MR Arjun and Krishna Prasad and Vishnu Vardhan in males’s doubles confirmed promise, they’re but to win an enormous match. 

India badminton, of late, has been excessively depending on PV Sindhu, the reigning world champion. There isn’t any denying the truth that she is the face of Indian badminton. However the degree of expectation the two-time Olympic medallist has been bearing is big. Will probably be unwise to anticipate her to win large tournaments on a regular basis. She has given India the BWF World Tour Finals gold and 5 World Championships medals – two bronze and two silver medals and a gold medal in 2019, which is one other first within the annals of Indian badminton. 

Although B Sai Praneeth received India the World Championship bronze for the primary time since 1983, he has been fairly inconsistent. His compatriot, Kidambi Srikanth had a dream run in 2017 when he received 4 of six Tremendous Sequence titles in a calendar 12 months. However 28-year-old Hyderabadi couldn’t preserve the consistency going ahead.

Finish of Golden time for Indian Badminton?

The section of 2010-2021 was arguably the golden age of Indian badminton, with the nation, for the primary time, profitable 4 medals on the Commonwealth Video games in New Delhi, courtesy of Saina Nehwal’s girls’s singles gold and Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa’s girls’s doubles gold. It was the second time India received two gold medals in twelve editions however completed second behind Malaysia. In 2018 CWG, with two gold, three silver, and a bronze, India, for the primary time, turned essentially the most profitable workforce.

Since 2011, India by no means returned dwelling empty-handed from the World Championships, with Sindhu being the five-time medallist on the annual meet. Since 2012, India received a medal in girls’s singles in three consecutive Olympics – Saina’s bronze in London, Sindhu’s silver and bronze in Rio 2016, and Tokyo 2020, respectively.

Other than these main successes, Saina, Sindhu, Jwala, and Ashwini teamed as much as win the 2014 and 2016 Uber Cup bronze medals and the ladies’s workforce received the bronze within the 2014 Asian Video games for the primary time since 1982. The final time India received a medal on the continental Video games was in 1986 when the boys’s workforce received a bronze.

On the BWF World Tour, Saina received 10 Tremendous Sequence titles and Sindhu received three, other than the 2 Olympic medals and a BWF World Tour Finals crown. Srikanth turned one of many 4 shuttlers in historical past to win 4 Tremendous Sequence titles in 2017 and briefly held the No. 1 rating on the BWF males’s singles rankings whereas Praneeth received the Singapore Open Tremendous Sequence title.

Within the males’s doubles, Satwiksairaj and Chirag received the Thailand Open 2019. However their again to again win within the Tokyo Olympics was not sufficient for them to interrupt the barrier of the primary spherical. Although they might not progress to the second spherical, they produced an inspiring present beating British pair of Ben Lane and Sean Vendy and world No. 3 pair from Chinese language Taipei of Lee Yang and Wang Chi-Lin.

When India noticed Jwala, Saina, Sindhu within the girls’s circuit and Srikanth and B Sai Praneeth in males’s singles sporadically dominating the world badminton after the retirement of All England champion Pullela Gopichand for the final twenty years, the instant way forward for Indian badminton appears to be like not promising, with younger faces struggling to make their mark. Normally, younger shuttlers are inconsistent and lack correct steering.

Who after Sindhu, Srikanth and Praneeth?

Among the many upcoming gamers, solely Lakshya Sen exhibits real promise in males’s singles whereas in girls’s singles the likes of Malvika Bansod (20), Ira Sharma (17), Maisnam Meiraba (18), Tansim Mir (16) and Rituparna Das (20) have been patchy. It have to be informed that in her teenagers Saina had received her first Tremendous Sequence title, whereas Sindhu clinched two World Championships medals, an Uber Cup and Asian Video games bronze.

In males’s doubles, India has younger faces in Satwiksairaj, Chirag Shetty, Dhruv Kapila, MR Arjun, Krishna Prasad, and Vishnu Vardhan, it must be seen after they yield a end result. Nonetheless, India’s future in girls’s doubles largely appears to be like bleak after Ashwini Ponappa and Sikki Reddy.

Specialists’ View

Requested about the way forward for Indian badminton, former chief nationwide coach, Vimal Kumar, sees hope in Lakshya Sen however is just not too optimistic about the way forward for girls’s singles and doubles.

“I’m pleased with Lakshya Sen’s progress. He may give India some good leads to close to future. However I don’t see anyone emulating Sindhu and Saina’s success within the coming time. The present batch of girls’s singles gamers is but to win an enormous match. By this age, each Saina and Sindhu received prestigious titles,” stated Vimal Kumar, who’s presently the chief coach at Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy in Bengaluru.

In the meantime, Jwala Gutta welcomed the Badminton Affiliation of India’s plan to rechristen the construction of badminton within the nation, establishing 5 regional academies and a nationwide middle for excellence in New Delhi.

“In our time or earlier than there have been numerous gamers of high quality. Earlier the power was not there. Now, we’ve the power, nonetheless, we aren’t producing good high quality gamers. However why? Just one Sindhu or Srikanth won’t make India a badminton powerhouse. To develop into sturdy within the sport, we want hundreds of gamers in all of the disciplines; we don’t have that at current.

Badminton amenities must be made out there in each nook of the nation. The teaching system additionally must be modified. There’s a want for a decentralization of the prevailing system. The present system is killing gamers’ primary instincts, so we aren’t getting high quality gamers from the present batch. To supply gamers of worldwide caliber, the main target must be on utilising gamers’ energy, and emphasis must be given to their weak spot,” stated 2011 World Championship bronze medallist Jwala Gutta, who now runs a 16-court academy in Hyderabad which is India’s largest badminton facility.