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Yes, very nice to see Saina back near the top her game -- and therefore the world. She has turned it around in time for the 2016 Olympics I think. A gold at Rio must be her single-minded goal!

I think any medal at Rio would be a great result from her.

I would gladly take that too.

After her All England final performance, Saina is back to being world no.2 behind Chinese Li Xurei.

This time she has a great chance to become world no. 1 after the Indian open super series which will be player later this month. Both the Chinese world no. 1 Li Xurei and no.3 Shixian Wang are skipping the Indian open and will loose a lot of points that they earned last year. So, world no.1 is up for grabs between Saina and Carolina Marin.

There are a lot of permutation and mathematical computations being done, but it looks if at least Saina can finish 1 step ahead Marin at Indian open, she will certainly be world no. 1.

Great comeback as she become WR #2 after 2 years gap.

WORLD NO 1

WAY TO GO SAINA!

I hope she wins the title today and keeps the #1 ranking for a long time......

Mods, can one of you please update the thread title to reflect the "WR#1" since it is confirmed for 02-APR ranking list.........

Yessssssssss.

Kudos to Sandeep who predicted this 10 years back when he started this thread. Where is he these days ?

This was his first post in this thread-

Sandeep wrote:For all those wondering who saina nehwal is, she is a badminton player. She is extremely talented and my guess is that she would be world no.1 some day in badminton. Especially after seeing sania's achievements and how proud we felt for following her matches even before she was famous made me start this thread. I thought it would be a good idea to follow the progress of this young girl, who very well can be an answer to india's quest for olympic gold in individual event.

His first prediction came true after 10 years. Hope is other one regarding Olympic gold becomes a reality next year at Rio.

PKBasu wrote:I don't know why there is this tendency in India's Badminton to have one player dominant for years on end. Prakash Padukone was champion for 9 consecutive years, then Syed Modi for a similarly long period (at least 8 years, from what I recall). Before Prakash P, Suresh Goel was national champ about 7 times, interrupted occasionally by a few wins for Dipu Ghosh. And on the women's side, Madhumita Goswami (later Bisht) won it 8 times in a row (and remained near the top for a decade and a half), and now Aparna Popat has gone one better.

I also like looking at this post from PKB in hindsight. We have now quite serious strength in depth with 3 very good players in MS (Srikanth, Kashyap and Prannoy) and 2 very good players in WS (Saina and Sindhu); hopefully the next decade sees us also grow in doubles as well.


The first few pages of this thread are a great lesson in putting how far we have in badminton (in singles) in perspective. We have gone from celebrating wins over top-50 players to our #3 in men's singles beating the world #2 for a second time in a row only worth a few posts.

Congratulations!!!
Easiest part is becoming No 1, difficult part is to retain that top position.

sameerph wrote:Kudos to Sandeep who predicted this 10 years back when he started this thread. Where is he these days ?

Indeed Sameer, that was the first thing I thought of too - what a great prediction, and what a great feat to be on top of the world!!

Sandeep is in Hyderabad now, I think. I see his posts occasionally on Facebook.

Saina is back to no 1 this week. So now both Saina and Sania are number 1!!!

Musical chairs between top 3 continued and Saina is back to being no.1 now.