While many thanks go to Pullela Gopichand, Syed Mohammed Arif, Saina Nehwal, Jwala Gutta, Parupalli Kashyap and many more for bringing the sport to its current position, it’s difficult not to notice a commonality between the lot: All of them are associated with Hyderabad.
Saina Nehwal, the poster girl of Indian badminton hails from and trains in the city and so do players like Jwala Gutta and Parupalli Kashyap and of course Pullela Gopichand the man himself. These are people who are responsible for making Hyderabad the badminton hub in India. This is nothing near a coincidence. Syed Mohammed Arif, who has been working for badminton here for over two decades, says, “We built a system where we train the kids rigorously on the basics.” Even the juniors from the city are doing extremely well and many of them are gearing up to break into the big league as well.
Prannoy, ranked third from the top among India’s badminton players, does not belong to Hyderabad but has been training under Gopichand for three years. He says, “I trained in Kerala till I was played U-16 but after that the city didn’t have the facilities needed to break into the international league, so I chose to come to Hyderabad.”
Gopichand says, “We have world-class facilities, be it training equipment, courts or just the lighting. In the last five years or so, top players like Valiyaveetil Diju, Ashwini Ponnappa and the likes shifted their training base to Hyderabad. There are many talented players in the junior and sub junior circuit as well, and I'm sure, they will choose Hyderabad.”
Younger players are motivated to come here and train owing to past success stories. Kashyap says, “The culture is such that we look at our seniors and learn from them and aspire to be like them.”
The veterans of the sport have plans for the future of the sport — academy with 30 courts will soon sprout in Hyderabad.