Hyderabad: Silver medallist at the recently-concluded World Badminton Championships, shuttler PV Sindhu stated here Tuesday that international matches are becoming very competitive by the day. She also said that she was glad to have managed to change the colour of her medal to silver, having won bronze medals in two earlier editions in 2013 and 2014.
“There aren’t going to be easy matches anymore. Because, if you see, women’s singles, men’s singles, doubles, whatever, nowadays, the matches comprise of rallies that are too long,” Sindhu told reporters after her return to her hometown. “Nobody is getting an easy point anywhere. It is just that you have to fight for each point,” added the 22-year-old from Hyderabad.
Sindhu also was quick to point out that even though she was upset after losing the final for a day, she is back again to her normal self.
“Anyone would be upset at losing such a close match. I was also, but now it’s back to normal. At the same time I am happy that I have won the silver medal this time around,” stated the player, who many Indians are already calling the ‘greatest’ in the annals of India’s sports history.
“After the Rio Olympics medal, this silver comes next as the World Championship is a very important tournament. I am happy and elated because I had managed to win two bronze medals earlier… this time I have changed the colour to silver. That definitely is a huge surge forward,” added the shuttler.
Talking about the nail-biting final, Sindhu said: “Mentally and physically, it is just tiring. But at that point of time, you just think that you have to get that next point, because, it is the final of the World Championships.
There were huge expectations about a Sindhu-Saina (Nehwal) with both reaching the semifinals. However, that did not happen with Nozomi Okuhara (ultimate winner) beating Saina in the semis. However, Sindhu did not rule out an all-Indian final in a major event in the near future.
“It can definitely happen,” Sindhu asserted. “At the World Championships, we expected (all-Indian final). But, it did not happen. But, definitely yes, it will be, someday,” she added.
Sindhu said sufficient training time before the World Championships had helped her to a great extent. “We really do not get much time to train in between tournaments. May two weeks at the most, but this time around, I had two months to train and the hard work has certainly paid off,” Sindhu pointed out.
En route to the final, Sindhu had beaten two Chinese players – Sun Yu and Chen Yufei. When asked whether the Chinese dominance was on the wane, Sindhu was quick to reply in the negative.
“China are a very strong nation, they have a tremendous pool of players,” informed Sindhu. ‘It’s just that I played better on those two days. There is very little separating the top 15 women’s players. Anybody can win.”
Elated Gopi expects many more medals
Two days after Indian badminton’s poster girls, PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal bagged a silver and bronze medal respectively at the 2017 World Championships, an elated national coach Pullela Gopichand said Tuesday that the day is not too far when the likes of Kidambi Srikanth will make a podium finish.
“We have broken the barrier and won two medals at this year’s World Championships. Things will improve from here on,” Gopichand said.
“We have been very fortunate that we have had players like Saina and Sindhu in the women’s segment, who have actually gone up and pushed the bars of fitness higher and the men whether it’s (Parupalli) Kashyap, (HS) Prannoy, (Kidambi) Srikanth, B Sai Praneeth, all of them have actually started to see the importance of it.
“At the end of it Sindhu’s performance will eclipse that of others but I think Saina winning a bronze and then Srikanth coming close to winning a medal – their performances also deserve the highest accolades. This was Kidambi’s second quarterfinals at the World Championships, he has also reached the last eight stage of the Olympics, so he is not far from a medal,” added Gopichand.
Heaping praises on his prodigy, Gopichand expected a lot many gold medals in 22-year-old Sindhu’s cabinet by the time she retires from the game.
“Sindhu did a great job in the WC final. At 22, she has big medals under her belt – three World Championships (bronze in 2013 and 2014, silver in 2017) and a Olympics medal (silver at Rio),” pointed out Gopichand. “Four consecutive years of medals and hopefully she will have a lot many gold in her cabinet at the end of her career,” he added.
Press trust of India
