CHENNAI: India's singles badminton coach, Siyadatullah, will not be with the contingent at the World Championships this week. The Hyderabad-based coach, who was earmarked for the assignment, has still not got his visa so he will be speaking to the players via Zoom throughout the championships. "I haven't gotten my visa yet," he told The New Indian Express.
"Even if I do get it by Monday, I can only leave by Tuesday. I have to give a Covid test and wait 24 hours for my results to come through. So it will be be Thursday by the time I will get to go on court. So I won't be joining the team in Spain. I will be speaking with the players individually via Zoom before their matches," he adds.
This means that PV Sindhu's personal coach, Park Tae Sang, will be doing double duty at the Worlds. Apart from guiding the double Olympic medallist during the course of the week, he will also be attending to the needs of the four men's singles players (Sai Praneeth, K Srikanth, Lakshya Sen and HS Prannoy) in Huelva.
There was a delay in submission of the documents for processing visa and that meant he couldn't get his visa before the tournament began. On Saturday, the coach had expressed hope to this daily that he might be able to travel for the tournament but decided against it as he is yet to get his visa.
However, he doesn’t envisage any problems in Sang taking some time out to help the likes of Srikanth. "That really shouldn’t be a problem," he said. It’s not yet known if Sang will be court side for the four men’s singles players.
As such, this isn't expected to be a big blow because Sang also knows the way the men's singles players way. Back when Korea's Kim ji-Hyun was training Sindhu in 2019, Sang was in charge of training the singles players. The other Indian coach - Arun Vishnu (for the doubles teams) - had no such problems and reached Spain before the tournament began.
Srikanth wins first round
HUELVA: Kidambi Srikanth beat Pablo Abian of Spain 21-12, 21-16 to begin his BWF World Championships campaign on a winning note on Sunday. Meanwhile, both of India’s doubles pairs lost in the first round.
While the men's duo of Manu Attri and Sumeeth B Reddy bowed down to Joel Eipe and Rasmus Kjaer 21-16, 21-15, the women’s duo of Pooja Dandu and Sanjana Santosh retired after they had lost the first game 12-21 to Alyssa Tirtosentono and Imke Van Der Aar.