On the eve of one of Kidambi Srikanth’s most high pressure encounters since the Rio Olympics quarterfinals, Pullela Gopichand says he spoke to his ward only about the importance of eating right and taking enough rest and left the job of devising the strategy for the Australia Open final against Olympic champion Chen Long to the player and his accompanying coaches.
Srikanth, who was playing in his third successive Superseries final, was chasing history and was also facing an opponent he had lost to five times before. Under such circumstances a coach and a mentor would have normally tried to drill in the strategy in his pupil’s mind and keep him focused.
“He is a smart player. He reads the game really well so I leave that part to him,” Gopichand explains.
For those who have known Srikanth, the 24-year-old has the natural ability to read situation and strategies. Instead it is the physical preparation, diet and rest are the areas that one needs to constantly remind him of.
Talk to any coach who has worked with Srikanth since the day he joined the Sports Authority of Andra Pradesh badminton coaching centre back in 2001 as an eight-year-old and the first word that they use to describe him is “lazy”.
Version 1.0
There are enough stories from his junior days about how the young Srikanth would skip physical training sessions, would hardly eat well and had been guilty of not turning for practice for days after a bad loss. One theory even suggested that despite being a brilliant singles player he opted to concentrate on doubles as a junior only because one needs lesser court coverage in the paired events.
But even while discussing these issues, the admiration about the innate talent the boy possessed was always evident and so was the frustration over his underachievement.
Nobody can now complain about the latter after Srikanth became the first Indian to reach three consecutive Superseries final and the first male shuttler to win back-to-back titles at this level when he clinched the Australia Open crown beating Chen on Sunday.
Version 2.0
It is not that Srikanth hasn’t seen success before. He became the first Indian male badminton player to win a Superseries title when he upset Lin Dan in the China Open final back in 2014. He bagged the 2015 India Open crown and climbed to a career high world ranking of 3.
It was version two of Srikanth. The boy from Guntur, who had joined the Gopichand Academy back in 2010, was slowly converted into a singles specialist by the chief national coach, who coaxed him at times but was mostly a hard taskmaster, who even made him eat non veg to gain strength.
It probably also helped that Srikanth had to wait for six months to join his brother K Nandagopal in Hyderabad as initially only the elder brother was picked in the academy and the youngster sulked and stayed away from training. And when he finally joined the academy, he was willing to work harder. The GoSports Foundation came on board in 2012 and provided him the necessary support in terms of trainers and physiotherapist as he began to target international tournaments and also supported him for exposure tours.
But even the success had its pitfall. The additional demand on his physical body and the need for discipline meant that he constantly suffered with injuries and things got a bit difficult to handle. “He would always do what was told to me. But then he would crib and not put in 100 per cent,” is how Gopichand puts that phase in words.
“I think the Olympics and the injury thereafter has been a major turnaround,” says Gopichand insisting that Srikanth had worked extremely hard for the Rio Games and the loss did affect him a lot.
In fact, after the Olympics when his fellow academy-mate PV Sindhu was the toast of the entire nation, Srikanth simply decided to skip training for a few weeks, went home and did not train at all. And when he did return, he suffered a stress fracture while trying to rush into competition and was out of action for three months.
Version 3.0
Srikanth himself admits that it was the most difficult period of his career. Speaking after the final in Sydney on Sunday the 24-year-old winning or losing was the last thing on his mind when he returned to competitions and just wanted to play.
“It’s just that I’m not thinking of winning or losing. I missed competitive badminton and wanted to enjoy the match. It’s like it happened because I missed that period of competitive badminton; it’s like I wanted to hang in and play as many matches as possible,” he told reporters.
During that period, Srikanth would work on his upper body strength and strokes instead of just waiting to recover fully and the hard work has been showing now.
“Just like the win in China and the rise in 2015, the Olympics and the injury thereafter was probably a good thing to happen,” says Gopichand, adding that failures are part of a development process.
The Srikanth who turned up for the second edition of the Premier Badminton League in January after the injury could figure out how to win matches despite not being at his best physically.
The arrival of Indonesian coach Mulyo Handoyo in February gave an added impetus to Srikanth’s development as he changed the training systems and forced all the players to work harder. “The sessions for Srikanth are probably more intense and he not allowed to relax,” explains Gopichand. “We all know how talented he is and that he needs to probably just work 70%-80% than others to be at his best. And the results are showing.”
Unlike in the past when he would just look to smash his way through, Srikanth showed the patience to grind through points and the start of the second game against Chen in the final where the Indian kept tossing the shuttle back till he got a clear opening showed that he has come a long way.
But the most important part of this version 3 of Srikanth is that he has now seen success and failure early in his career and is now matured enough to build on this success.
“When I first found out how to win big tournaments (All England Open) I was already 27. There was no time to fail and come back again,” says Gopichand, adding Srikanth saw success when he was 21 and had the time to regroup and make a comeback.
“More importantly, he started training very late and hasn’t put in a lot of years in training. This means that his body can mature further and he will gain more strength,” Gopichand adds.
Even Mulyo thinks that Srikanth has the ability to rule the world like his earlier ward Taufik Hidayat did back in Indonesia. And version 3.0 of Srikanth seems ready to prove his coaches right.