Delhi: Former players, including Jwala Gutta, Arvind Bhat, and Chetan Anand, have been included in the coaches’ panel prepared by the Badminton Association of India (BAI).
While Pullela Gopichand is the chief national coach, BAI selected 19 others to coach men’s singles players across the country in different zones. There are 12 others for men’s doubles and four coaches for women’s doubles.
The list of men’s singles coaches include former German Open Grand Prix Gold champion Arvind, 2008 Olympian Anup Sridhar, 2006 CWG bronze medallist Chetan Anand and Dipankar Bhattacharjee, who represented India at the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics.
The list of women’s doubles coaches includes 2011 World Championship bronze medallist Jwala, eight-time national champion Madhumita Bist, Pradnya Gadre and Oli Deka.
The men’s doubles coaches include some young former players such as Akshay Dewalkar, Arun Vishnu, Sanave Thomas and Rupesh Kumar, besides regular coaches like Vijay Deep Singh and Uday Pawar.
“The idea was to give these coaches and former players an opportunity to train shuttlers in their zone. These are coaches who have shown interest when we had organised the conclave in May.
“We will have half yearly meetings and if they are able to deliver and show results in a couple of years then those shuttlers would be included in the national camp,” BAI secretary Anup Narang said.
Press Trust of India