Here in the present India Open, something is missing. Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu, the leaders of Indian badminton over the past fifteen years, will not be competing in the annual tournament for the first time since 2007.
Saina is nearing the end of her career, but Sindhu has struggled with injuries and a sharp decline in performance over the past 18 months. The double Olympian’s most recent victory was in the Commonwealth Games in 2022. She has consistently exited the first round in addition to losing to practically all of the best players.
With the Paris Olympics approaching, the 2019 world champion has been experimenting with various things to try and revive her career. She first parted ways with Korean coach Park Tae-sang at the beginning of the year before beginning training with Vidhi Chaudhary of the Sports Authority of India (SAI). In July 2023, she hired Muhammad Hafiz Hashim, a former All England champion from Malaysia, as a coach. When that failed as well, she made the decision to train with the legendary Prakash Padukone.
Like Saina, Sindhu switched base to Bengaluru in the first week of January, and since Hashim, who had accompanied Sindhu on his first trip just before the Asian Games in Hangzhou, was a member of the Suchitra Academy in Hyderabad, where Sindhu would receive his physical training, a new coach was hired around the new year.
Agus Dwi Santoso, an Indonesian who was previously the singles coach for India, has joined Sindhu’s squad as the world No. 11 starts her quest for a third Olympic medal.
“Sindhu started training with Agus about 10 days back. Of course, Prakash is sitting during her sessions, trying to help her out in different aspects. Prakash monitors her sessions and gives advice on the technical and tactical aspects,” PPBA head coach and national selector U Vimal Kumar mentioned.
“She had a strain on her left knee. She had a plaster. Now she tapes it. The physio, the whole team are working with her. She didn’t show any discomfort while training as she was doing a good recovery programme in Hyderabad. Now it is time to train,” added Vimal.
“Sindhu needs to take a little more initiative because she suddenly has gone a little defensive. If the opponent plays a slow game, she will also slow down her game. If the opponent is playing fast, she will try to cope,” averred Vimal. “There was no initiative like playing at the net, creating opportunities, going on the attack. Prakash’s inputs will help because he can convey those things to her.”
From February 13–18, Sindhu will make a reappearance at the Badminton Asia Team Championships in Shah Alam, Malaysia. “We can really gauge where Sindhu is at when she returns to the court. She will get good match practice. That can help her at the European circuit in March. She needs some wins. Eventually it is all about confidence.”
“The main thing will be to beat the four top players because her contemporaries have also slightly declined, be it (Akane) Yamaguchi or Ratchanok (Intanon) or (Nozomi) Okuhara, even though Yamaguchi can still be tricky,” Vimal said.
“I am looking at Chen Yufei, An Se Young, Carolina Marin and Tai Tzu Ying. Carolina too it depends on whether she recovers because she has had too many injuries. An Se Young is a notch above while the others are at the same level. If Sindhu can beat them in the coming tournaments that will give her that added confidence.”
Since 2019, Sindhu has not defeated Asian and Olympic champions Tai Tzu and Chen, and her most recent victory over three-time world champion Carolina Marin dates back to 2018.
“You have also see that Sindhu has been injured on and off. She was playing well when she got injured, recovered, returned and got injured again. She played in between injuries, which is why she lost. She has not been able to completely recover from injuries,” noted the Taiwanese player, who on Wednesday advanced to the Super 750 event’s second round by defeating Gao Fang Jie of China 21-14, 21-18.
