BENGALURU: Seven sixty-six — the number of days since Kidambi Srikanth last won a BWF singles crown. It paints a painful picture for the shuttler after the highs of 2017, where he won four Major titles. Disappointment has been written large on his performances over the last two years and injuries have not helped his cause. The exit of singles specialist coach, Mulyo Handoyo, last year might have had an impact too. Irrespective of the reasons, recent results do not hold him in great stead for the Olympics.
In fact, his form has gone from bad to worse this year. The first four months witnessed Srikanth reach the quarterfinals five times and semifinals once in seven competitions. After the start of the BWF Olympic qualification period from April 29, the 26-year-old has featured in nine tournaments, getting knocked out in first round (thrice) and second (four). He reached the semifinals and quarterfinals in the other two.
As a result, he is currently ranked 24 in the Race to Tokyo rankings. A country can only send two men’s singles players if the shuttlers are inside top 16 when the qualification period comes to a close on April 26 next year. At present, Sai Praneeth (8), Saurabh Verma (20), Parupalli Kashyap (21) are ahead of Srikanth. Former chief coach of India, Vimal Kumar feels that the Indian has to up his game to secure qualification.
“The next few months is going to be extremely important for him. It is not only about playing now, he has to win tournaments, and then he will be in a position to qualify for the Olympics. He is in that sort of a stage now. These things about qualification must be worrying him too,” Kumar told this daily. No wonder, the Guntur man decided to skip the next edition of the Premier Badminton League as he tweeted about the need to ‘focus on international events’.
Also, it gives him time to get back to good fitness and take care of his knee, a major problem in his career. He also missed the China and Korea Open in September for the same reason. With Srikanth having failed to qualify for the BWF World Tour finals, it could mean extra rest. Provided he does not have any injury problems, one can expect his participation in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand Masters, all in January. He needs to attain positive results soon to get the confidence back.
“His confidence level is low. He needs to get his confidence back. There have been instances when he lost to players, who he should have beat. When you lose your confidence level, your stroke play tends to get affected. That, I feel, is letting him down,” said Kumar. “May be, he can look at a slight change in environment. For a couple of weeks, he can train in a different environment, may be with different sparring partners. That way, he can come out of this.”
2019 run