HYDERABAD: Jwala Gutta, one of the best doubles players India has ever produced, has been critical of Pullela Gopichand for years. The outspoken shuttler has, time and again levelled charges against him. In an interaction with Express, a day after she took to social media to say that the Telangana government had been lax in helping her establish a badminton academy, she alleged that it was due to her frosty equation with Gopichand that the government had ignored her. When this newspaper contacted the chief national coach, he chose not to comment on the issue.
Sources close to him said that an individual cannot be held responsible for the decisions of a state government. In a tweet that was deleted later, Gutta had suggested that the government has failed to fulfil promises made to her, which supposedly include a house plot. “Athletes are getting benefits from both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh governments. I am being ignored because I am not on good terms with him (Gopichand). How does it matter what my equation with him is? My achievements should be enough. I have been running behind the government for four years.
If I do not get support, how will I give back to the sport? Why not support me so that there are more medallists in the future?” asked Gutta. The player also blamed Gopichand for her exit from various national camps. “I was shown the door even when I was number one. After Rio Olympics, I was told to leave the national camp without being given any notice,” she said.
To that, sources revealed that there are documents that prove her absence from the camps was her own choice. “The attendance registers can be checked. She did not attend camps for months at a stretch. Even then, she was included later. If she wanted, she could have trained at the Prakash Padukone academy which also hosted national camps. She was given everything she had asked for. A player of her stature cannot say that one individual can jeopardise her career,” sources said.