Dubai The Chinese puzzle has well and truly been solved, make no mistake about it. For years, India’s badminton superstar Saina Nehwal has been racking her brains on how to defeat the invincible Chinese women shuttlers. It had become an obsession that she struggled to get over. But when she finally found a way, it really came as no surprise to those who have followed her progress.
The 25-year-old not only beat the Chinese in their own backyard late last year by winning the China Open Super Series Premier title, but also became the world No. 1 on April 2 this year, thus fulfilling what she says was her mom Usha Rani’s dream.
A lot has changed for the now Bengaluru girl — she was known as the Hyderabad girl before — since the world championship last year when her form and confidence had seemingly deserted her. She had almost decided to quit badminton after losing to the top players regularly and she feared her game was going nowhere with critics even telling her that her career was finished.
That’s when she decided to take matters into her own hands and ended her partnership with her mentor and long-standing coach Puella Gopichand at his academy in Hyderabad and roped in Vimal Kumar to train with him at the Prakash Padukone Academy in Bangalore. It was not just about getting on board a fresh mind, it also entailed moving from Hyderabad to Bangalore, her second big move after shifting from Hisar in the state of Haryana to Hyderabad in the early years of her life.
Her latest move turned out to be a masterstroke. She needed new ideas and a fresh approach after hitting a wall and Kumar was instrumental in making important changes to her game. Saina dramatically improved her movement on the court which she herself admitted needed work on and her confidence in picking up shots improved by leaps and bounds in the process.
The results were there for all to see. While her coach Kumar predicted she would be No. 1 in May this year since taking over in September 2014, Nehwal beat all expectations to assure her place at the top by the end of March itself when she made the India Open Super Series final, eventually winning the title. In between, she reached the All-England final, being just one set away from the title and also won the India Open Grand Prix.
The consistency was back and by becoming the world No. 1 she had emulated Padukone in whose academy she is training now. Needless to say, she credits her turnaround as much to her coach Kumar as to the former All-England champion.
It has been a remarkable journey for the girl who was already turning heads when she was just 16 and representing the country in the Uber Cup, the world team event, still in the shadow of nine-times national champion Aparna Popat. She won the four-star Philippines Open thereafter to announce her arrival on the international stage. Her path to stardom had well and truly been charted.
As any top sportsperson will tell you, getting to the top involves a lot of sacrifices and not just by the player. The parents play a big role, especially in a country like India and especially if you are a sportswoman. Her father Harvir Singh worked in the Chaudhury Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University in Hisar and she completed her first few years of schooling at the Campus School there, before he decided to shift to Hyderabad to encourage his daughter to pursue badminton. It’s crucial decisions like this that shape a player’s future and Nehwal’s parents have now made two significant ones.
The country understandably went overboard when Nehwal won the bronze medal in the 2012 London Olympics, with cash awards flowing in. Nehwal rates her ascent to the top of the badminton world just after her Olympic medal.
And while her Chinese nemesis Li Xuerui reclaimed her crown for a brief week, Nehwal is again back at No. 1 this week and looking down from the summit and seeing four Chinese names below her in the top-10 rankings must be giving the steely-resolved girl from the steel city of Hisar a lot of satisfaction.
