‘Saina showed if we are committed enough, anything can happen’: HS Prannoy on ex-World No.1’s impact on Indian badminton

India’s badminton contingent will be front and centre when they travel to Huangzhou, China for the Asian Games.

When they compete though, they will be without a name that has been the headline act in all Asiads for India since 2006. In May this year, Saina Nehwal, who has more firsts to her name as an Indian in badminton than most who played the sport before or since she started out, pulled out of the squad selection trials due to fitness issues.

Saina, and later PV Sindhu, have been the medal contenders for India in the big events for a better part of the last decade. This time though, Sindhu goes in having endured arguably one of the worst years of her career and it is HS Prannoy who is realistically the top Indian contender at the moment for an individual medal at the Games.

31-year-old Prannoy and Saina seem to be on two different sides of the aisle as far as injury struggles are concerned. Saina’s problems have made it difficult for her in recent years to compete at the highest levels, and this, coupled with the age of 33, have led to murmurs of the word “retirement” starting to be mentioned during her interactions with the media. While she stated that she has no plans to bow out, this little break from top level badminton has possibly given time to look back on the impact she has made on the sport in India, and in the world for that matter. Prannoy feels that it is one that can never be understated.

“It made a huge difference,” Prannoy told Hindustan Times when asked about what effect Saina’s almost unprecedented success at her peak had on other Indians in the sport. “At the time there was no other athlete from badminton who could go out there and challenge the Chinese and Koreans and the Japanese. Until then those were the only countries we heard, they were just ruling the sport. All of a sudden when you have a figure from India and you are training alongside (her) on the side court, somewhere there comes a belief that ok, if she is able to do it, then we can also do it if we are committed to the sport,” he said.

Prannoy stood out in his junior years, which was around the period when Saina started making waves in the international circuit. Unlike Saina, though, injury troubles kicked in soon and plagued him for much of the years that followed. However, the work he and his team put in in recent years seems to bearing fruit in 2023, with Prannoy becoming the first Indian man since the legendary Prakash Padukone this year to reach three consecutive World Championship quarterfinals and winning bronze after beating two of the previous world champions in back-to-back matches on the way.

The importance of grinding it out
Prannoy said that Saina’s success showed players that they need much more than just talent and skill to make it. Conversely, she also showed that one can make it to the top even if they are not considered as talented as those they are competing with.

“The commitment was huge from Saina. The way she used to train, she used to always push in the training sessions and that was something to learn for all us juniors at that time. We saw that if we are committed enough to work, anything can happen.

“And then she was very gritty. She was not really a god-gifted skillful player. She just grinded it day in day out and when she is on the court she never wants to lose. That kind of an attitude when you keep seeing on an everyday basis, it gives a lot of different perceptions, it tells us that it is ok if you are not skillful enough. You just have to work hard, grind it out, and the results will come.”

Prannoy has had his fair share of lengthy matches this season – for example on the way to his Malaysia Masters title in May, four of the five matches he played went well over an hour, with two of them going past the hour and a half mark. Only two matches he played in the Worlds finished within the hour. Prannoy says that Saina showed that being gritty and grinding it out in a match is what matters far more than the beauty of your game, something that he is adhering to now more than ever.

“There are players like Saina who proved that you just have to be gritty enough to make sure you are a world champion. For me personally that gave a lot of learnings. Now that I am getting into my 30s I also have realised that it is just that you have to be gritty to win a lot of matches. Nobody is going to come and give it to you in a plate, you just have to train hard. A lot of those kinds of things I would say came from watching Saina very closely for almost a decade,” he concluded.