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Our players have accepted/ gelled with Handoyo coaching style and started given the results ... Definitely a setback for us.

Yes, this year our players like Sirknath,Prannoy, Praneeth benefitted a lot from Handoyo's presence as Gopichand himself cannot pay good level of attention to all players. Sad that he seems to be leaving. We need to get a similar level of replacement to keep the improvement going.

Nice summary of our current doubles scene by doubles coach Kim Tan Her-

India has a long way to go in doubles, says coach Kim Tan Her

There has indeed been some good improvement since Kim joined the coaching team. Satwik-Chirag are now #25 ,Manu-Sumeeth #30 and Arjun-Shlok #25 in mens doubles, Ashwini-Sikki #25 in womens doubles, Pranav-Sikki #21 and Satwik-Ashwini #58 in mixed doubles.

Hope by 2020, we can get at least 1 pair each in top 10 which can make them medal contenders at Olympics. Not easy to achieve that though.

Sameer Verma has reached the final of Swiss Open 300 Super 300 ( equivalent to grand prix gold).

These are his results this week -

[R1] Sameer Verma (IND,44) d. Thomas Rouxel (FRA,74) 22-20,21-10
[R2] Sameer Verma (IND,44) d. Yu Igarashi (JPN,58) 11-21,21-18,21-16
[QF] Sameer Verma (IND,44) d. Kenta Momota (JPN,42) 21-17,21-16
[SF] Sameer Verma (IND,44) d. Kantaphon Wangcharoen (THA,49) 21-14,11-21,21-12

Win in the QF against Momota was big as Momota was making his comeback and was on a 38 match winning streak.

Among our other players, Guru Sai Dutt reached the QF before losing to the Thai teenager who lost to Sameer in the SF. This was Guru's best performance after a long time.

Next,

[F] Sameer Verma (IND,44) vs. Jan O Jorgensen (DEN,112)

Like Momota, Jorgensen is making his comeback and will be tough to beat in the final.

Sameer wins the title with another very good win know the final.

[F] Sameer Verma (IND,44) d. Jan O Jorgensen (DEN,112) 21-15 21-13

His first grand prix gold level title outside India.
He will come up to 31-32 in rankings now and will keep going up as he lost a lot of time last year due to injury.

P Kashyap posted a photo on Instagram with a trophy. From the background, it looked like he must have won the Austrian Open. Double delight for us in Badminton!!

Yes, that was Austrian open international challenge tournament which Kashyap won. That was much lower level event than what Sameer won. More like challenger level tournament as compared to lower ATP level tournaments which Sameer won.

Anyway, this is an article on him -

Kashyap: ‘I have to be smarter in my training’

This week, some of our players played in the $25,000 Brazil International Badminton Cup.

In the Men's singles, Harshit Aggarwal proceeded to the SF before losing to the 5th seed today.

R1 Harshit Aggarwal 16-21 21-11 21-5 Milan Dratva(SVK)
R2 Harshit Aggarwal 21-16 17-21 21-19 [4] Jason Anthony Ho-Shue (CAN)
QF Harshit Aggarwal 21-14 21-9 [7] Milan Ludik (CZE)
SF Harshit Aggarwal 17-21 21-23 [5] Sergey Sirant (RUS)

In the women's side, Vaishnavi Reddy Jakka also lost in the SF.

R1 [3] Vaishnavi Reddy Jakka BYE
R2 [3] Vaishnavi Reddy Jakka 21-8 21-2 Ariel Lee (USA)
QF [3] Vaishnavi Reddy Jakka 17-21 21-17 21-19 Lianne Tan (BEL)
SF [3] Vaishnavi Reddy Jakka 17-21 14-21 [2] Sabrina Jaquet (SUI)

In the Men's doubles section, Tarun Kona and Saurabh Sharma are in the SF which will be played later today.
In the Mixed doubles, second seeds Saurabh Sharma and Anousha Parikh reached the Finals which will be played tomorrow.

Our players, Arun George and Sanyam Shukla (both ranked 79) won the $10,000 Dutch International Open doubles this week. Here are the results:

R32 Fredrik KRISTENSEN/Carl Christian MORK (SWE) 21-14, 21-10
R16 Peyo BOICHINOV/Ivan PANEV (BUL) 21-14, 21-13
QF Mathias BONNY/ Oliver SCHALLER (SUI) 19-21, 21-17, 21-14
SF [1] Konstantin ABRAMOV/ Alexandr ZINCHENKO (RUS) 21-17, 21-14
F Nikita KHAKIMOV/ Andrey PARAKHODIN (RUS) 21-19. 21-19

Great win against the Top-50 ranked top seeds.

This week there was a BWF super 100 tournament in Hyderabad. ( similar to grand prix level earlier).

Everyone except our top 2 in mens singles ( Srikanth,Prannoy) and top 2 in womens singles ( Sindhu,Saina) played here. We won 2 titles in mens singles and mens doubles and narrowly lost mixed doubles final.

These are the final results -

Mens singles

[F] (1) Sameer Verma (IND,21) d. Joo Ven Soong (MAS,91) 21-15 21-18

Mens doubles

[F] (1) Satwiksairaj Rankireddy / Chirag Shetty (IND,21) d. (3) Akbar Bintang Cahyono/ Mohd. Reza Pehlawi (INA,47) 21-16 21-14

Mixed doubles

[F] (1) Pranav Chopra /Sikki Reddy (IND,24) l. (6) Akbar Bintang Cahyono/ Winny Octavina (INA,50) 21-15 19-21 23-25

Second seed Sai Praneeth got upset in the first round itself here. So, good that at least Sameer lived up to his seeding.
First title at this level for Satwik and Chirag which is a good morale booster for them.

Our top players should be playing at Super 750 tournament in Japan next week.

Saina Nehwal has pulled out from Japan Open starting tomorrow. She has choosen China 1000 and Korea 500 and Sindhu has choosen Japan 750 and China1000 out of three super series in the month of September. Good decision as back to back 3 super series would be tough I guess for them. With Saina's withdrawal Sindhu path towards Semi Final seems smooth. For Men's except Praneeth everyone is playing in Japan starting tomorrow.

Check out the hilarious video in this link.

https://scroll.in/field/907306/watch-wh ... an-academy

After coach hunting for a long time, Indian Badminton finally gets some more foreign coaches.

This is the first time India has hired Korean Singles coaches Kim Ji Hyun and Park Tae Sang.
Indonesian doubles coaches Flandy Limpele(Athens Olympics bronze medalist) and Namrih Suroto will be for doubles players.

This is an important year considering that olympic qualification starts this year. After Mulyo Hondoyo left the most effected one is Srikanth. Hope this will help him,

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/spo ... share_tray

Good stuff. Not sure about their credentials.

Whatever their credentials, they will at least reduce the dependence only on Gopi and that will be only beneficial. Last year or more we are suffering particularly in mens singles after Mulyo Handyo left.

This is another piece of good news on coaching-

OGQ and PPBA rope in Badminton legend Morten Frost to India for a one-year coaching stint

Hope Lakshya in particular is able to take the next step in mens tennis with guidance from Prakash and Frost, 2 legends.