Sports India

Aparna Popat is readying herself for another comeback. The nine-time National champion has not laid her hand on a racquet ever since the Commonwealth Games in March. The reason - a wrist injury she’s been carrying for nearly a year.

Speaking from Bangalore, Aparna said she had not stepped on the court for nearly three months. “I started training only a couple of days back. I hope to regain fitness and match-preparedness in the coming months.”

The 28-year-old Mumbaikar revealed she was carrying the injury for nearly a year. “In fact, I was carrying the injury during the Thomas and Uber Cup qualifiers at Jaipur in February. At that time, I didn’t realise the true extent of the injury,” she said.

But she aggravated it while playing in the Commonwealth Games individual championships quarter-finals.

“I was playing against England’s Alicia Peters. In the second game I experienced a sharp pain after hitting a smash. That moment I knew there was something wrong. I went back to Mumbai where my physio asked me to stop playing immediately,” says Aparna.

The injury also kept Aparna out of the month-long coaching camp under P Gopi Chand. “To train under him is something I will miss.” How did she spend her time while recuperating? “I went back to Mumbai. Back to my parents, my friends. It was a welcome break. I feel it has helped me get that much-needed respite and also regain my focus. I want to give it a final shot. I know things are not going to be easy, but I am determined to do my best.”

Aparna has to start from a scratch. By not playing in the International Badminton Federation (IBF) circuit, her ranking has taken a free-fall. Ranked as high as 22, she is currently placed 124th. That means she will have to come through qualifiers in order to play the main tournaments. “Playing qualifiers can be tough. You can end up playing two matches a day. But I am ready for the long haul.”

She is not perturbed by the fact that now the focus has shifted to Saina Nehwal. “I do not see any competition between me and Saina. Some people ask me whether she is a better player than me. All I have to say is that she has got her positives and I have got mine.”

Knowing Aparna Popat for so long one can be sure that the soft-spoken Mumbaikar is not likely to bow out on a low note.

The Indian badminton squad currently training in Malaysia has been left without any top men’s shuttler after the lone presence — World No. 46 Arvind Bhat — returned back following an ankle injury.

The country’s top shuttler World No. 20 Chetan Anand had already decided not to attend the Badminton Association of India (BAI) camp, instead choosing to train by himself.

There was further bad news on the preparation front when World No. 34 Anup Sridhar was forced to forego his training stint in Denmark due to unreasonable demands by the club there. Sridhar is scheduled to play just 14 matches there, but the club wants his commitment till the end of December.

“It would have been a great opportunity to play against the top Danish shuttlers there and hone my skills, but they want me to stay till December. There are several important tournaments coming up not least the Asian Games in Doha and I don’t want to miss them.

“So, I have to train in Hyderabad. There’s no point in going to Malaysia either since by the time I get my visa in order, I will just be left with one week of training time,” Sridhar said. Bhat is currently undergoing treatment and a rehabilitation programme in Bangalore. He will join Sridhar at the camp in Hyderabad on July 31.

With the senior women’s players like Aparna Popat, Trupti Murgunde and Jwala Gutta also skipping the camp, it’s only the juniors who are left in Malaysia and to think that the Malaysians have assembled the world’s top players to train with the Indians.

Former great Misbun Sidek, a contemporary of Prakash Padukone, is overseeing training at the National Centre with World No. 9 Muhammad Hafiz B Hashim, World No. 19 Ben Hong Kuan and World No. 52 M Roslin Hashim lining up to spar with the Indians.

The Badminton Association of India’s (BAI) approach-play for its Project 2010 is getting murkier by the day. Last Friday BAI president V K Verma had told Newsline that nine-time national champion Aparna Popat had withdrawn from the list of campers after her name had been included in the original list of 32.

But, on contacting the player, this paper learnt that Aparna had received the letter only on Saturday and she had not yet sent the BAI any reply regarding her decision not to join the camp. While it is clearly a case of the BAI president jumping the gun, what is obvious is that the BAI was just trying to save its skin by putting Aparna’s name on the list.

Aparna’s aversion to camps is all very well known and by putting her name on top of the list, the BAI hoped to kill two birds with one stone. It avoided the furore that would have been caused had her name not been there, at the same time being safe in the knowledge that she would withdraw her name from the list.

While Aparna has decided not to join the camp since she doesn’t see herself playing till 2010, the rumour that is circulating in the badminton circles is a concerted effort to kill off any possible threat to Saina Nehwal’s supremacy in the woman’s game.

A case in point is obviously the exclusion of Trupti Murgunde from the list. Trupti has a 50-50 record against Saina and is considered the lone player capable of challenging the 16-year-old in the years to come. With Saina’s coach Pullela Gopichand also being the chief national coach, grapevine has it that there is a lot more to Trupti’s exclusion than just her failure to commit herself till 2010, as is being officially circulated.

When asked the reason for Trupti’s exclusion, Gopichand stuck to what Verma had to say. He talked about having open trials for the non-campers before any major event, at the same time sounding a note of warning about their future.

Pune, May 26: ONLY a week ago, outgoing national badminton coach Vimal Kumar had claimed that selecting junior-level players in the Indian squad in place of experienced seniors was premature, with the former being unprepared to play in tournaments like the Philippines and Singapore Open events.

And now, the first “junior” to contest this claim to some extent, has been his own student at Bangalore’s Prakash Padukone Academy, and city lass Sayali Gokhale
Playing in her first international tournament at the senior-level, the 19-year-old stunned fifth seed and World No. 29 Ana Rice at the Phillippines Open on Wednesday.

“I didn’t know she was the fifth seed, so that helped a bit!,” said Sayali, speaking to Sportline from Manila.

And though she lost the subsequent match to Japanese shuttler Ai Goto, it was nevertheless a perfect start to her international career at the Senior level, when Sayali rallied from a game and 16-20 down against Rice to fight back and turn the match in her favour.

“The confidence went up. But I could have played much better in the second round,” she says.

Sayali admits her inclusion in the squad considering her “virtually nil” experience at the senior-level had been a “shock”, but the feeling was soon replaced by the determination to live up to the expectations. “We knew we had been take on with the aim of developing the junior-string of players in focus,” says Sayali, who played in only her first Senior national tournament in February this year and put on a hearty fight against stalwart Aparna Popat. “So obviously, much was expected.”

However the youngster is quick to play down her initial success.

“It’s nothing great to beat a non-Asian player. I want to prove myself against the Asian players who are better. So there’s still a long way to go,” she says. Sayali was among the first batch of students taken on at the Padukone Academy’s feeder centre in Pune in 1999. A promising junior, Sayali won the All-India Chipalkatti Memorial Under-19 title in 2002 as a 15-year-old, and two years later went on to claim a silver in the Youth Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

The state’s top-ranked junior in 2005 however was still a surprise name on the Badminton Association of India’s team-list for four tournaments in Asia, which left out seasoned stars Trupti Murgunde and Aparna Popat. But now having made her presence felt, the youngster is keen to make the most of the opportunity. “This whole experience is new for me. I want to learn as much as I can,” she says.

Next up is the Indonesian Open, where Sayali will have to first play the qualifying rounds. The task is tougher and the youngster would want to outdo all expectations again, including her own.

India’s top woman badminton player Aparna Popat has been appointed the global brand ambassador for Indian handicrafts. Popat recently won the national title for the eighth time in a row. She is the third Indian sportsperson to be signed on for the promotion after ace golfer Jeev Milkha Singh and hockey ace Gagan Ajit Singh.