Rio Olympics silver-medallist PV Sindhu and her coach Pullela Gopichand were felicitated by the Maharashtra Badminton Association here on Tuesday.
The felicitation ceremony was attended by Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and Vinod Tawde, the state's sports minister.
Sindhu, the two-time bronze medallist at World Championships, scripted history when she became the first Indian shuttler to win silver at an Olympics. Against all odds, Sindhu made it to the finals of the women's singles final, before bowing out to Spain's world number one Carolina Marin.
President of the Maharashtra Association, Arun Lakhani said, "We have extremely talented players, we have great badminton minds/ coaches, what we need is strong support on infrastructure which fortunately is also there. We need to connect these dots and come together for the sport, and I can assure you that within two years we can see a fresh new beginning for the players blossoming out of these facilities."
Lakhani further said, "I have recently taken up the responsibility to lead MBA and am trying to focus on infrastructure development and use of technology and increasing communication/interaction with all stakeholders. We recently launched player friendly software for tournament and calendar planning. We already have over 4000 players registered and we expect it to go to 10,000 by year end."
Lakhani took over the reins of the Maharashtra Badminton Association in October 2015. Since then, the Maharashtra Badminton Association has been aggressively working towards putting together a robust grassroot development program and local tournaments to identify and hone young shuttlers from a very young age.