 "Saina Nehwal")
At the Delhi government's Badminton Training Centre at the Thyagaraj Sports Complex, all five courts are occupied. About 120 children, the youngest all of six, come to train here under Vikas Kumar Sharma, a coach from the National Institute of Sports, Patiala. Ever since Saina Nehwal won bronze at the 2012 London Olympics, the number of trainees at the stadium has been steadily increasing. Now, with PV Sindhu winning a bronze at the World Championships in Guangzhou, interest has exploded. "I've received at least 400 calls since Sindhu's bronze, mostly from parents of little girls, asking if we will train their child to become a badminton player," says Sharma. "I've never seen anything like this."
While the Thyagaraj Sports Complex does not charge a rupee to train, the rush is no less at the academies that do. The beginners' batch at the MV Bisht Badminton Academy, which trains students at Delhi Development Authority's Squash and Badminton complex at Siri Fort and charges Rs 3,000 per month, is equally choc-a-bloc. Coach Vikram Bisht says he cannot accommodate any more students beyond the 150 he already has. Kartikeya Rao, the CEO of Krrish Delhi Smashers, one of the six Indian Badminton League, or IBL, franchises, estimates that in Delhi alone, 50,000 children and young adults are currently paying to play badminton.
The most coveted training ground is over 1,500 kilometres away in Hyderabad, the country's badminton capital. "We get 10 to 20 requests for admission every single day. And after every victory like Saina's or Sindhu's, the number shoots up," says Pullela Gopichand, former All-England champion (2001) and founder of the eponymous badminton academy on the outskirts of the city. A place in his academy is what many aspiring players and their parents hanker for because of stellar performances of Gopichand's wards Nehwal (currently ranked 4th in the world), Sindhu (10th) and Parupalli Kashyap (14th). It seems to matter little that the academy has not accepted fresh admissions for the last four years. Gopichand says he gets requests for admission from 30-year-olds who say they are very passionate about the game, and "college students, especially those doing professional courses, saying they are willing to give up everything for the game." At the Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium in the city, where Gopichand trained, newly-appointed coach Kiran Kumar says he has to turn away at least five or six parents every day as they too are full to capacity.
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On August 15, a packed house in New Delhi's Siri Fort court watched as Nehwal and Sindhu squared off in an IBL match between Hyderabad Hotshots and Awadhe Warriors. Amongst the guests were Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram and his wife, Nalini. The $1-million tournament is the sport's richest event anywhere in the world. The six teams have splurged untold crores in buying players. One of them, BOP Banga Boys, which represents Bangalore, discloses it has bought 11 players for Rs 3.5 crore. That's not small money. Vodafone is IBL's title sponsor. ESPN and Star Sports are telecasting the matches in India, while Fox Sports will air them abroad. Cricketer Sunil Gavaskar, who belongs to a sport which is an obsession in India, has seen enough potential in badminton to buy a team (Mumbai Masters). Sahara and Dabur too have invested in franchises (Awadhe Warriors and Pune Warriors, respectively). There was a scramble amongst overseas players, except those from China, to be a part of the carnival.
Now, with the Badminton World Association announcing that the prestigious Thomas Cup and Uber Cup will be held in India for the first time this year, Indian badminton will get the attention it deserves. Carsten Mogen-sen of Denmark, who is ranked number two in men's doubles and is a part of IBL, says that "India has a lot of businessmen who can develop this sport." Amit Mavi, managing director of BOP Group which has interests in realty and owns BOP Banga Boys, is one of them. Instead of building golf courses, which no one uses, he says he intends to build badminton courts in his next projects. Cafes around the theme of badminton are being planned in Bangalore.
Badminton, it seems, is the answer to the question: what next after cricket? For a long time, that slot was occupied by hockey. But indifferent performance at the international level for over three decades has sapped people's patience. The last World Cup medal (a gold) India won was in 1975, and the last Olympic medal (also a gold) came in Moscow in 1980 (it was boycotted by the real powerhouses of world hockey). Tennis sizzled for a moment when Sania Mirza broke into the ranks of the world's top 30 players, but she failed to live up to the promise (her current rank is 586) and the interest began to ebb. Indian boxers, wrestlers and shooters too have impressed in recent years but these aren't games ordinary folks readily take up. This is the gap badminton has plugged. "You have to give consistent results," says Nehwal. "The hockey league didn't pick up because the performance in the sport hasn't been consistently good."
That's a valid point. The country's steadily improving performance in badminton on the global stage has added to the game's growing popularity. According to Gopichand, much of the credit goes to Nehwal's performance in global tournaments. (Prakash Padukone's stellar performance in the 1970s and 1980s didn't have the same effect.) In a poll that we ran on our website, www.business-standard.com, 58.2 per cent of the respondents said Nehwal is the biggest contributor to badminton's popularity in India.
Saina's success in the endorsement circuit has added to the glamour of badminton. Last year, Rhiti Sports Management signed Nehwal for a Rs 40-crore, three-year contract. She is the second most-valuable sportsperson in the country after MS Dhoni. In fact, no cricketer, save Dhoni and perhaps Virat Kohli, enjoys the same brand equity as her. (Gopichand had famously refused an endorsement deal with a cola company after winning the 2001 All-England.) Forbes estimates her net worth at over Rs 13 crore. Others too are making serious money. When Sindhu won the bronze at the World Championships, the Badminton Authority of India announced it would be giving her Rs 15 lakh.
Corporations see in badminton the chance to associate with success. Gopichand has managed to attract sponsors for his academy and his students: only 10 per cent of the students pay the full fee of Rs 5,000 a month. Hyderabad-based PVP group, which produces and finances films, has bought Hyderabad Hotshots of which Nehwal is the captain. "Badminton has a mainstream connect; all of us have played it one time or the other," says Prasad V Potluri, or PVP, the owner. "Like cricket, it has the right amount of entertainment quotient. It was only logical for us to become part of this phenomenon."
What really tilted the scales in India's favour was the new rule introduced in 2006 where points were scored on all services - you lose a service, you lose a point; you break the opponent's service, you gain a point. All of a sudden, the matches became shorter. Even if you had lesser energy, you could now excel in badminton. The advantage was now with the Indians. Vimal Kumar, who co-founded the Prakash Padukone Academy in Bangalore in 1994, traces the improvement in India's performance to the wins in the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 after which the government took up badminton as a priority sport. Gopichand estimates the government spends Rs 6-7 crore on sending Indian players abroad for tournaments, an amount unheard of for badminton five years ago. "Earlier, we used to get to play two or three international tournaments. Now, many get 10 to 12 tournaments abroad," says he.
Little wonder, aspirants are willing to go to great lengths to learn the game.
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It is 4 am; while the rest of Hyderabad slumbers, the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy stirs itself awake, and not very languidly. Players start coming in by 4.15 and begin warming up and stretching while the lights in the courts are switched on and crates of shuttlecocks brought out. Gopichand reaches at 4.25, dressed in dark blue Yonex T-shirt and shorts. Ever since his academy opened its doors in 2008, he has been arriving before 4.30 every morning and leaving only at 7 at night. Around 40 of the 118 students stay in the dormitories overlooking the eight badminton courts. Practice goes on for six to seven hours a day, with the rest of the time devoted to sports like swimming, rest and an hour or two for academics. The regimen is strict, the idea being to "eat, sleep and breathe" badminton, without any distraction.
Watching the shuttlecocks fly back and forth on the courts of Gopichand's academy is G Sudha. Her daughter, Vrushali, is one of the seven girls on the court and a player who has won six national titles in the under-15 category. Sudha has been accompanying her daughter for each of her sessions for the past five years. Three years ago, the family put their flat in faraway Kukatpally on rent and shifted to an apartment in Gachibowli, where the academy is located, to avoid the 17-km commute four times a day. When Sudha's husband got a job in Nigeria, mother and daughter stayed back so that Vrushali could continue being coached by Gopichand. "The other day, an army officer called and told me he had taken a transfer from Chhattisgarh to Hyderabad so that his child could join the academy. I feel bad refusing people but there is nothing I can do," says Subbaravamma, Gopichand's mother, a petite figure who takes care of the academy's administration.
Sixteen-year-old Daniel Farid, who has been training at the Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy since he was 10 and holds the top rank in the under-17 singles in India, lives 20 km from the academy. Every morning, he takes a bus to reach the academy by 6 am. A student of the 11th standard, he trains for about 10 hours every day and attends classes in the evening. "Earlier, parents wanted children to get into golf or cricket, but now more and more are turning towards badminton." Farid, who is playing for BOP Banga Beats, says, "Besides me, there is only one other senior student at the Padukone academy who belongs to Bangalore. The rest, about 12 of them, are from others states like Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand."
Cricket's rival might just be here.
