Indian badminton reached never-seen-before heights in 2016 thanks to PV Sindhu’s Olympic silver at the Rio Games. While it is difficult to best a year in which an Olympic medal has been won, 2017 perhaps managed to do that, considering it wasn’t just one player and one event making the headlines.
Kidambi Srikanth was the biggest story of the year. The 24-year-old is now a household name after becoming only the fourth men’s singles player in world badminton to win four or more Superseries titles in a calendar year. He is also now the fourth most successful player in terms of overall titles behind the sport’s legends Lee Chong Wei, Lin Dan and Chen Long.
If there was any blip in Srikanth’s 2017, it was his inability to go past the quarter-finals of the world championships in Glasgow.
2017 was a great year for Indian men’s singles players in general. Apart from Srikanth, B Sai Praneeth also won a Superseries tournament in Singapore, beating Srikanth in the final. This was also the first Superseries final contested by two Indian players.
HS Prannoy also had a breakthrough year as he won the US Open Grand Prix Gold, broke into the world’s top 10 for the first time, and even beat the man of the moment, Srikanth, in the finals of the senior Nationals. In fact, there was a point when as many as five Indian men were ranked in the world’s top 20 in singles, which goes to show how far Indian badminton has come.
The women didn’t have a bad year themselves. In fact, one could argue that Sindhu’s 2017 was even better than her 2016. While her Olympic silver last year catapulted her to fame, she has actually stepped it up in the 18 months since.
Sindhu won her first ever Superseries title in November last year and followed it up with two more in 2017, apart from bagging silver at the world championships and the Dubai Superseries Finals. In total, she has played seven major finals since Rio.
She played some memorable matches along the way, including the final of the world championships against Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara, a match that no one is going to forget to soon.
Saina Nehwal had a point to prove this year after a career-threatening knee injury and a surgery last year raised doubts about her ability to return to top form. While Saina did not win any major tournament, she did win the Malaysia Masters Grand Prix Gold and also bagged a bronze at the world championships.
Nehwal also beat Sindhu in a memorable final of the senior Nationals this year. The Nationals don’t matter as far as the world rankings are concerned but the confidence boost that Nehwal would have gotten from this win will go a long way towards helping her making rapid strides in international badminton once again. Nehwal also recently said that she would have won more medals had she got enough time to work on her fitness.
2017 was also the year in which Indian doubles players finally began to make their mark. Satwiksairaj Rankireddy was the standout performer as he and Ashwini Ponnappa helped India reach the quarter-finals of the Sudirman Cup. The 17-year-old also paired up with Chirag Shetty to reach a Superseries quarter-final. They did it twice this year.
The mixed doubles pairing of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and Sikki Reddy also reached the semi-finals of a Superseries for the first time. Chopra and Reddy also won the Syed Modi Grand Prix Gold earlier this year.
All these performances have ensured that 2017 will be remembered as one of the best years for Indian badminton. And there’s no doubt that 2018 can be even better.