Prior to the beginning of this decade, India possessed a sole world championship medal, two All England crowns and a couple of bronze medals at the Asian Games as far as badminton was concerned. These look good in isolation, however, when it dawns that several of these accomplishments, sans Pullela Gopichand’s 2001 All England crown, had come in the 1980s the lack of major achievements for more than three decades start to hurt badminton lovers in India. Also, the game seemed like a male bastion during the period with no female contenders in immediate sight to reverse the existing norm.
However, things started to change from 2006 onwards with the arrival of a Haryana-born sprightly girl, Saina Nehwal, on the badminton courts and who nurtured her shuttling skills at Gopichand’s academy in Hyderabad. Saina then went on a winning spree by pocketing 20 major international titles and even entered the imagination of the whole nation by securing Gold at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. But the real high for Saina came in the 2012 London Olympics when she secured a Bronze.
Despite these achievements accomplishments at World Championships and Asian Games continued to elude India till the women’s doubles combo comprising Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa made history through a breezy waltz to the 2011 World Championship semi-finals. The pair’s bronze put an end to close to three decades of the quest for a World Championship medal.
Then in 2013, a 17-year-old girl from Hyderabad burst onto the badminton scene, PV Sindhu. She instantly conquered the hearts of everyone by winning a bronze at the Worlds. This was nothing short of incredible as it was the first by any Indian woman and only the second in any category for the country in nearly three decades. This tall prodigy, later on, dethroned the reigning queen Saina to assume the throne by winning a silver in the 2016 Olympics and a silver in the 2021 quadrennial event. PV Sindhu became the new poster girl of Indian badminton and a force to reckon with in the international arena as well.
However, the sport in India started to look like an all-exclusive women’s club. The boys, such as Parupalli Kashyap, Sai Praneeth, Kidambi Srikant, despite having immense potentials were merely content with sporadic success and reluctant to step out of the shadows of Saina and Sindhu. But in 2017, the gender disparity began to narrow down considerably as Srikant won four Super Series titles and got anointed as the numero uno player across the globe, the honour even the girls could not achieve. To add more glory to men’s power, Praneeth also won Singapore Open Super Series in 2017, secured a World Bronze in 2019 and grabbed two Grand Prix.
So, things at the moment are looking bright for the future of Indian badminton, considering the talents at disposal. If the exploits of Srikant and the young sensation Lakshya Sen at the recently-concluded World Championships are anything to go by, then it won’t be an exaggeration to say that Indian shuttlers, in both men and women’s categories, are going to rule the world stage in years to come. However, the players need to keep themselves fit as well because an injury would not only take them away from the real action for a considerable period but also peg them back by many years.
