New Delhi: 2014 is a great year for Indian badminton. Indian shuttlers clinched eight individual titles and also broke new grounds in team championships, making India a dominant force at the badminton world.
In addition to the historic bronze medal at Uber Cup and Asian Games women’s team event, India’s women’s singles ace Saina Nehwal triumphed at India Grand Prix Gold. The Indian ace added two more titles to her kitty, clinching the Australia Super Series at Sydney in June and China Super Series Premier at Fuzhou in November.
Meanwhile, another Indian women’s shuttler, P. V Sindhu bagged her second consecutive bronze medal at the World Championships in August, and defended her Macau Open Badminton Championships title in November 30, 2014.
For men’s singles, underdog K. Srikanth came out of nowhere to clinch the China Super Series Premier title by defeating Lin Dan.
The 2014 also saw the emergence of other Indian rising stars such as Parupalli Kashyap, Aravind Bhat, and H S Prannoy. With Parupalli winning the Commonwealth men’s singles title, Saurabh Verma took home the 2014 Austrian International Challenge men’s title and PC Thulasi won the women’s title at Sri Lanka Open.
The increased popularity and participations amongst sports fans in India have led to the surge of rich pool of badminton talents from India. Though India still experiencing inconsistency on its international badminton success, in the coming few years, India surely have huge potential of becoming the dominant player in the world of badminton.
