New Delhi, Dec 31 (IANS) After facing a mixed run of results in 2024, Indian shuttlers will gear up for the New Year with enthusiasm as the season began with the Malaysia Open and India Open but the main focus will be on the most prestigious All England Open Badminton Championship and World Championship along with other big events.
Indian shuttlers have won a total of five titles in the 2024 BWF World Tour. Of the five titles,one each are in men’s and women’s singles, two in men’s doubles, and one in women’s doubles.
The new season will begin with Asian swing as the Super 1000 tournament, Malaysia Open, starts on January 7 in Kuala Lumpur, followed by the Indian Open, which is a Super 750 event, scheduled from January 14-19 in the nation’s capital.
Indonesia Master Super 500 (January 21 to 26) and Thailand Masters Super 300 (January 28 to February 2) will sum up the Asian circuit before the action shifts to Europe.
The European leg will begin with none other than the All England Open, the world’s oldest and most prestigious badminton tournament, running from March 11 to 16 at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham.
Indian shuttlers have been participating in the All England Open for a long time, but have only won two titles so far with five final appearances between 1980 and 2024.
Badminton legend Prakash Padukone is the only Indian to have reached the All England Open final twice, first in 1980, when he created history by becoming the first Indian to win the prestigious title. The following year, he made his second final at the tournament but couldn’t manage to defend his men’s singles title. After a long wait of 21 years, Pulle Gopichand became the second Indian to win the All England Open in 2001.
London Olympics bronze medallist Saina Nehwal then became the first Indian woman to reach the All England summit clash in 2015 and ended up as runner’s up before Lakshya Sen, became the first Indian male shuttler to make the men’s final in 21 years since Gopichand.
Star shuttlers, including PV Sindhu, who recently tied the knot, Lakshya Sen, the dynamic men’s doubles pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, and the promising women’s doubles duo Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, who reached back-to-back semifinals in 2022 and 2023, will be striving to clinch the elusive title and end a 24-year wait.
Former champions Satwik and Chirag will be aiming to retain the men’s doubles title at the Badminton Asia Championship, scheduled from April 8 to 13 in Ningbo, China, after missing out on the tournament in 2024. The star duo was the first Indian pair to win the gold medal at the continental event in 2023.
Satwik and Chirag, who became the first Indian men’s doubles pair to reach the summit of the BWF rankings in 2023, didn’t have a blast in 2024, as they won just one title, the French Open, their second triumph at the tournament, after having lost two finals at the Malaysia Masters and the India Open.
However, they had a strong start to their Paris Olympic campaign and made it to the quarterfinal but failed to move past the last-eighth stage.
Elsewhere, in the mixed team event the shuttlers will be trying to change the colour of the bronze medal they won in 2023 at the Badminton Asia Mixed Team Championships, set to take place from February 11-16 in Qingdao, China.
The BWF World Championships is set to be held from August 25 to 31 in Paris, France. India have won 14 medals at the championships from 1983 to 2023.
Sindhu is the most successful Indian shuttler at BWF World Championships with five medals. She is only the second woman in the world after China’s Zhang Ning to ever win five or more singles medals in the competition.
Double Olympic medallist Sindhu faced a challenging phase after her gold medal win in women’s singles at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Struggling to regain her form following an injury layoff, she encountered a series of early exits that saw her drop out of the top 10 world rankings in March 2023—a position she had maintained since November 2016. Adding to her woes, Sindhu missed the chance to secure a third Olympic medal after being eliminated in the pre-quarterfinals of the Paris Olympics.
But at the start of December, Sindhu bagged her first title after more than two years as she defeated China’s Wu Luo Yu in the Syed Modi International women’s singles summit clash.
The former world champion last won a title at the Singapore Open in July 2022. In the ongoing 2024 season, she only featured in the Malaysia Masters Super 500 final before ending her title drought in Lucknow.
Kidambi Srikanth (Silver 2021), Lakshya (Bronze 2021), Satwik-Chirag (Bronze 2022), and HS Prannoy (Bronze 2023) are the active players besides Sindhu with World Championships medals.
Notably, since 2017, India have won at least one medal in every edition of the BWF World Championships.
With several top Indian shuttlers aiming for major titles in 2025, including the prestigious All England Open and the BWF World Championships, the year promises to be pivotal for Indian badminton.
The players, fuelled by past successes and ongoing challenges, will look to further elevate India’s standing in world badminton.
–IANS
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