Future of Badminton in India

Badminton is now one of the popular sports of our country.Though till now Cricket is like the religion of India & all other sports are neglected in our country except Cricket.But recently Badminton is one of those sports in our country,which is gaining popularity.But this scenario was not present 7-8 years ago.

Now we can easily tell the names of few bright talented young shuttlers . Those players are performing well in recent years and they are becoming successful in big international events like Olympic Games,World Badminton Championship etc.But today I can remember a day.That was 9th August 2009.That was the day before World Badminton Championship and the host city was Hyderabad.I was reading a newspaper.There was a short report on this topic.At that time I came to know that there was a promising young shuttler, participating in that competition & she was the only hope for the host nation.She was Saina Nehwal . Though she failed to win any medal in that competition but I started following her. If I got any news about her or about any other badminton player in any newspaper,I cut that report and kept in a file. At that time my other family members was not interested about that & one day my mom told that,'why are you wasting your time by doing these crazy things?' But I did not lose my hope.Actually I did this because I wanted to track the progress of Indian Badminton.Do you know the recent situation?I watched the last World Badminton Championship with my family & specially with my mom and they were very interested to watch that.

I noticed that situation is changing. The news about Badminton started printing with bigger place on Sports News pages. Saina Nehwal's performance was improving day by day. She achieved World Ranking 1 spot & won Bronze medal in Olympic Games 2012 and made us proud.She was the first Indian who won a Olympic medal in Badminton. But the main person responsible for all of these changes according to me was P Gopichand. His tireless effort & struggle to build his international standard badminton academy and after that his outstanding coaching gave us a numerous bright talents. Upto 2013, Saina Nehwal was the only big  name of Indian Badminton at that time.But in 2013, P V Sindhu won Bronze in World Badminton Championship & came to spot light.

Probably this is the best ever period of Indian Badminton. P V Sindhu won silver in 2016  Olympic Games.This year she won Silver & Saina Nehwal won Bronze in World Badminton Championship & recently PV Sindhu became runners up in BWF Super Series Finals 2017. Srikant Kidambi won total 4 super series titles in this year & he is the 1st Indian holding this record . In recent time Sameer Varma, B Sai Praneet, Pranoy H S are performing well and most of them came from Gopichand Badminton Academy.

There were lots of legendary shuttlers in India like Prakash Padukone,Syed Modi,Pullela Gopichand,Aparna Popat, U. Vimal Kumar. But they were the only talent at their time. Now there are 6-7 good shuttlers in our hand. So,I am optimistic.If this young stars starts coaching after their career we will get more & more talented shuttlers and acoording to me the future of Indian Badminton is bright.

Badminton Association of India (the governing body of badminton in India) started Premier Badminton League from 2013 & 2017 will be 3rd season of this tournament.I was watching the promo of this tournament and really stunned to see our badminton players.That promo was saying that now we are much more professional in this sport.And now we can see that our badminton players signing big deals with big & renowned companies to promote their  product. That means Indian shuttlers are now much more popular and for that reason their brand endorsement values are also increasing.So I think,if any parent wants to see their child as a sportsperson,they can encourage their child to play Badminton,instead of cricket because now they can make bright future as an Indian shuttler.

(Picture Courtsey: Internet)