With most disciplines – be it tennis, hockey, shooting – falling by the wayside at the Rio Olympics, it has boiled down to two disciplines – badminton and wrestling – to salvage India’s pride. And the cradle for these two sport is confined to two states – Hyderabad in Telangana for badminton and Delhi-Haryana for wrestling.
The credible performance by PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth has proved one thing. That if a credible system is put in place and the discipline maintained, success will come in search of you. That is precisely the mantra at the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy in Hyderabad, the cradle for badminton in India. Home to most of the top shuttlers in India, barring Saina Nehwal who now trains with Vimal Kumar in Bengaluru, most of the players arrived here in raw form and are in different stages of being chiselled.
What helps is that Gopichand himself has been a player of repute, someone who has observed academies across the world, suffered due to the lack of infrastructure during his playing days and possessed the hunger to do the same for India. The generation of Saina, P Kashyap, Sindhu is extremely lucky that their bursting into the scene coincided with Gopi taking on the role of a coach. The self-taught Guru is today considered one of the most astute minds in the game today.
While the likes of Saina trained with other coaches before coming to Gopi, Sindhu is entirely Gopi’s pupil. She does not do a thing without Gopi Sir’s approval and his word is law. What helps is that she comes from a sporting family and understands the ethics of being a player. Her parents – both former Indian volleyball players – know the pain and joy of defeats and victories and how to draw lessons from the lows and the highs.
In fact, her father PV Ramana, who was a member of the Indian volleyball team that won the bronze at the 1986 Asian Games, took leave from December to May and again in July, just to be able to take Sindhu to the academy every morning at 345 am and bring her back home. He would spend the entire time observing her on court and giving her useful tips during the journey. Sindhu’s progress is the result of the combined effort of two men – Gopichand and Ramana. Incidentally, all three are Arjuna Award winners and even more interesting is that both Gopi and Ramana won their award in the same year – 2000.
Sindhu is the only Indian player to have won two bronze medals at the World championship and so knows a thing or two about big-match pressure. The fact that she is only 21 and easily has the potential to go for another two to three Olympics, makes her an extremely exciting prospect for India. What is even more encouraging is the number of young girls who will choose to pick up a racquet inspired by Sindhu’s expoits on the world stage.
