Indian Badminton Thread ...

[Sin Hombre]

Saina won as the did the doubles pairs, Srikanth and Ira lost. Srikanth is a no-hoper at this point.

Hopefully Saina can win and maybe pulls off an Indian summer in the twilight of her fantastic career.

[prasen9]

Saina faces Line Christophersen whom Sindhu thrashed 8 and 8. Let us see. Hopefully, Saina takes care of her and proceeds to the finals.

[sameerph]

Srikanth lost to 47th ranked Frenchman in straight games. He has totally lost it. I have not seen a player who has gone down so much from being world #1 and winning back to back superseries events in 2017 to losing in early rounds in lowest of the tournaments.

Sai Praneeth, HS Prannoy etc have also gone down.

Coaches and Gopi in particular will surely need to be blamed for this. When Indonesia Mualya Handyo was a coach all of them seemed to be on upswing. But, it seems the players could not cope up with him and he had to go. Same with Sindhu's Korean coach. Sindhu became a world champion and look at where she is now.

Clearly our badminton players have become high handed, getting compecant with all government support and are not hungry for suceess as they should.

[sameerph]

Saina faces Line Christophersen whom Sindhu thrashed 8 and 8. Let us see. Hopefully, Saina takes care of her and proceeds to the finals.

Saina lost against Christophersen 17-21 17-21. Watched part of the match and although Saina still has some of her skills, she seems to have put on weight and her movement is slow. If she does not qualfiy for this olympics, we may sadly see end of her great career.

Our young mens doubles team of 19 year old Krishna Prasad Garaga and 21 year old Vishnu Vardhan Gound Panjala have reached the final in their first international tournament together.

We do seem to be getting some decent talent in mens doubles now.

[Sin Hombre]

This is the end of the road for her.

[suresh]

Agree with Sameer. I saw the first game and was surprised to see that Saina has put on weight which was affecting her speed. Are we seeing the end of a great career?

[arjun2761]

I guess it depends on her motivation. Weight is pretty easy to lose with a better diet (like Tom Brady or Novak Djokovic) and workouts, so that is something she could easily do if she wants to do it.

[sameerph]

Mens doubles pair of Panjala and Garaga lost 19-21 in third game against top 20 British pair. This indeed looks a promising pair. Getting inside top 20-25 should not be such a difficult task for them soon.

[sameerph]

Due to Covid surge, Indian open which was to be held in May is cancelled and with that chances of Saina and Srikanth qualifying for Tokyo are pretty much gone. This is an article on that -

'Unfair, upsetting': Saina, Srikanth's Tokyo hopes dwindle with India Open postponement

[usaindia]

VICTOR Denmark Masters 2021
Lot of Indian participation
https://bwf.tournamentsoftware.com/spor ... 6A4&draw=2

[usaindia]

3 of them are in QF
Lakshya SEN [1] vs Christo POPOV
Victor SVENDSEN [7] vs Subhankar DEY [4]
Felix BURESTEDT [5] vs Chirag SEN

[jayakris]

Sameer had said this way back in the "Tokyo pre-mortem" thread (first page)

This is a nice article on young guns who can be expected to shine in Tokyo-
Five Young Prodigies Who We Should All Root for in Tokyo 2020
I expect Neeraj Chopra and Siril Verma to shine in 3-4 years time.

That article seems to be not there anymore, but whatever happened to Siril Verma? I don't follow badminton much, so asking... He was junior #1 just a couple of years ago, right?

[sameerph]

No, he was junior #1 in 2016 and runner up at world junior championships in 2015.

See this old article-

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/spo ... 492174.cms

But, looks like he has not taken off on mens tour at all. Currently ranked 105, went up briefly to 66 that was too way back in 2017. Maybe some injury, not sure. He is 21 now still not too late.

But, our badminton scene has really gone down rapidly in last couple of years, particularly both mens and womens singles. Maybe Gopichand started wielding too much influence and started playing politics.

Unless Lakshay Sen or Siril Verma suddenly spring up to life, the only ones I see mounting a strong challenge in badminton in 2024 apart from Sindhu is mens doubles pair of Sathwik and Chirag. They are really good. Next 2 years would be key for them.

[jayakris]

Oh, that is bad. It was 5 years ago that Siril was a junior #1? I guess I thought it was more recently.

Lakshya Sen is the other name I was wondering about. I thought he was nicely moving up a couple of years ago. Maybe Covid also came in the way of a lot of these players.

[sameerph]

Lakhshya came close to qualfication for Tokyo. He is now ranked #24. He will be completing 20 in a week's time and is currently the youngest player in top 25. His results have been a bit up and down though. He did play in Denmark international challenge last week and lost to 45th ranked Canadian in the SF. Hope he improves sufficiently to qualify and hopefully mount some challenge by Paris 2024. He will be close to 23 by then.