Photo courtesy: Badmintonphoto.com
Vol. 2. No. 9
For Private Circulation Only
October-November 2010
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GUTS - A Window into World Badminton
Oct-Nov 2010
The graph rises for Ajay Jayaram T
his might well be Ajay Jayaram’s breakthrough year. With two International titles under his belt (Czech Open and Smiling Fish), runner-up place at the Dutch GP, semis at the Malaysian GP Gold, and having broken through to the main draw of the Super Series at the Indonesian Open, Jayaram’s graph has shown a steady rise. Perhaps his most encouraging performance was at Dutch GP when he entered the final, toppling top seed Marc Zwiebler in the second round, Navickas (3rd), Ivan Sozonov (4th) and Anand Pawar (semis), before a groin injury hurt his chances against Sho Sasaki in the final. The mild-mannered Mumbaite talks to GUTS about his recent performances: On his recent form: Basically, my speed and agility have improved. I’m coming to the net faster and getting back quicker, and that has made my other strokes more effective. On his training stint at Portugal with Tom John: Sure, it has helped a lot. I had developed the fitness, so I could work on court for a longer time. I’m feeling the difference in my game, and not just the results. I’ve been sparring with Pedro Martins, and doing a lot of multi-feed with Tom. He gets the best out of you, especially if you are ready to work. He doesn’t let you relax. Could you take us through the Dutch? The first round was not tough. In the second I played (top seed) Marc Zwiebler. That was a big win. I started well as he wasn’t able to understand my deception at the net. Then there were some long rallies, but I kept at it. I was always aggressive, especially in receiving serve, and putting pressure on him with flat blocks. In the second game I was up 17-12; I relaxed a bit and he came back, but I managed to get through. The third round against Navickas wasn’t easy either. He was getting caught a lot, but he keeps running. In the fourth round it was Iva Sozonov of Russia. He likes to hit and get into rhythm. I didn’t let him get into rhythm, and he cracked after that. It was comfortable.
The semifinal was against (countryman) Anand Pawar. It was a tough match, he was playing well. It was a very nervous one, because when you play an Indian abroad there is a lot of tension. There’s a lot at stake. It’s there at the back of your head. In the second game I was up 18-12 but he Saina Nehwal
played well and put a lot of pressure and came to 18-all, and I started panicking. Then I played a rally, where I was three times on the floor, and I managed to win the match. I thought I wouldn’t play the final. I had picked up a groin injury, and it hurt every time I squatted… when I entered the final, the focus was on the pain. Mentally I was low, and I was slow reacting to his smashes. I was getting some points on the net, but I couldn’t go all out. Are you happy with the way the season has gone? I’m happy... but you can’t be complacent at all. You’ve got to improve with every session. What other interests do you have? I like to draw; I like reading fiction. I also like to solve CAT level sums in my spare time.
Ajay Jayaram: Recent performances French Open SS: 1rd: bt Rune Ulsing (Den); 2nd rd: bt Dicky Palyama (Ned), 3rd rd: lost to 3-Boonsak Ponsana (Tha) 21-15 21-14 Denmark Open SS: 1rd: lost to Du Pengyu (Chn) 1-0 retd. Dutch Open GP (runner-up): 1st rd: bt Manuel Batista (Ita); 2nd rd: bt 1-Marc Zwiebler (Ger) 21-19 21-17; 3rd rd: bt K Navickas (Lit) 21-18 21-15; Qts: bt Ivan Sozonov (Rus) 14-21 21-16 21-11; Semis: bt Anand Pawar (Ind) 21-18 21-18; Final: lost to 5-Sho Sasaki (Jpn) 21-16 21-19 Czech Intl (winner): Semis: bt P Wacha 21-16 21-9; Final: bt Scott Evans (Irl) 21-11 21-8
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Oct-Nov 2010
‘Badminton is a bridge’: Taufik T
here’s a certain calmness to Taufik Hidayat now. He’s no more the moody, temperamental star he used to be. Considered by many as the most talented player of all time, Taufik has grown from being prodigy to senior statesman of the game. Gone is the cockiness of earlier times, replaced by a calmness in the event of victory or defeat. To watch Taufik in action is an experience - it’s a demonstration of the art and science of badminton. His astonishing variety and craft have made him a near cult figure in most of the badminton playing world, and despite his popularity, there is as much myth as fact circulating around him. He has not always been easily accessible, and that adds to the enigma. In this candid interview, Taufik tells DEV S SUKUMAR of his worries over Indonesia’s badminton future, and his own equation with the game.
I know the history of Indonesian badminton. But those days were different. If you see the video of me or Lin Dan, and Rudy Hartono, it’s like... they look so slow. It’s like football, you see Pele or Maradona, or now Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, it’s different. The era was different, their style was different. You won the India Open last year. Were you surprised by the adulation you received in India? I’m happy to play in India. I was surprised by the attention. Badminton in India is growing up, because of Saina, Gopi and others. India is a big market.
You are a celebrity in Asia. How difficult is it to handle that attention?
You seem too laidback at times for competitive badminton. How do you maintain your fitness and competitive edge?
Yes, but it’s the same in Malaysia too. They have only Lee Chong Wei (world No.1) Our organisation is not right. Right from the Thomas Cup of 2002, for Indonesia it’s been Taufik, Sony (Dwi Kuncoro) and Simon (Santoso). I don’t know what will happen. Of course I’m worried. You are part of a great tradition of badminton heroes, such as Rudy Hartono, Liem Swie King, Icuk Sugiarto and others from Indonesia. How do you see yourself in that pantheon of greats?
It’s not my life. It’s something I love. It’s a way, it’s a bridge for achieving what I want to do. But so many players can’t make a living out of it. I can, so for me it’s a means to a better life. It’s about earning a living. Yeah, I enjoy it. Sometimes it’s boring. In Jakarta I have family, I have a daughter. I have training every day. And during tournaments when I’m travelling, I miss my family, I miss my daughter. It’s so hard. But my family is supporting me. When I don’t have a tournament, I like to stay home, spend time with my daughter. Earlier, I could do anything I wanted. Now I don’t have so much time.
(Laughs). When I was growing up, my coach was Iie Sumirat, he was different, he taught me to entertain, to have fun while training. He taught me not only to play, but to entertain people who are watching badminon. I can do everything. But I don’t like watching the game. I try to keep recalling how I played my last match, but I’m not the kind who likes to watch others and learn from them.
More than a decade after you started your career, you’re still leading the Indonesian challenge. Are you worried that there are no youngsters coming up?
What does badminton mean to you?
Do you still enjoy the game?
Your game is so complete, you have such a variety of strokes. Is there anything left for you to learn?
It’s not too hard. I train and play with my heart. If I enjoy it, I can play. If I don’t want to play, if I don’t feel like it, I think it’s my bad luck, and I lose. If I feel like it, I can do anything.
big titles, like the World Championship three times, the Olympics, the All England. But he’s still waiting for the Asian Games gold. You must be lucky, you know. Take (world No.1) Lee Chong Wei. He’s got so many Super Series titles, but he never has an Olympic gold or a World Championship or an Asian Games or even a SEA Games gold. He’s not lucky. I’m lucky. You can win ten Super Series titles and nobody will know, but if you win one Olympic gold, everybody will know.
What’s your opinion of Indian players? I played three games with Kashyap at the Thomas Cup and Indonesian Open. He’s a good player, a rally player, like Gopichand. All Indian players are like Gopichand. But Kashyap is not stable yet. At the moment he’s a good player, like Chetan Anand, like Anup Sridhar, who came up and went down. I hope Saina can be stable. But we’ll have to see. She’s still young. I don’t like the China players. But they have set the standard in badminton, right? It’s like, when you walk on the way, they’ll pick you and make you a world champion. They’re like a machine, you know. Players have short careers, they last four or five years maximum. And Lin Dan? I have resepct for him. He’s got all the
In Indonesia, badminton is the no.1 sport. In football, we are nothing. But in badminton, I have been world champion, Asian Games and Olympic champion. I feel normal. Sometimes I enjoy the attention, but sometimes I don’t have privacy. In Jakarta it’s okay. If I go to a smaller city, everybody will come up to me. I have to holiday in some other country. You prefer playing in Europe to Asia? I like it when I play in front of cheering crowds. In Europe, everybody is polite, in Asia -- China, Indonesia, Malaysia, everybody’s talking and shouting. I don’t care either ways. Growing up, who were your heroes? My idol was Poul Erik Hoyer Larsen. Also, there was Joko Suprianto. Joko was a complete player, and pleasing to the eye. He was an entertainer. I didn’t want to be like Poul Erik. I already knew how to play by the time I saw him in action. I played him twice, I lost one and I won the other. When he became Olympic champion I was 15, and he was 32. So I know I can also win the Olympics again, although I’m 29 now.
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GUTS - A Window into World Badminton
Oct-Nov 2010
A first step to the Olympics HS Prannoy, silver medalist at the Youth Olympics, is one of the biggest prospects of Indian badminton. The Gopihand trainee opens up to Balachandran TR on his growing-up years and his young career:
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I played a couple of matches in the team event and got used to the hall well. I qualified for the tournament proper winning two qualifying rounds. I upset the 2nd ranked Chinese Liu Kai 17-21, 21-19, 21-15 in the quarters. I could not play well at all in the semis against Kang W Jook and lost 13-21, 9-21. However, this bronze medal finish was my best so far in a World Junior Tournament.
our first memories of badminton?
My father Sunil Kumar used to take me along when he used to go for practice. When I was about 7 years and I vividly remember accompanying him every day to an outdoor court near my home. Formal coaching: When I was 9, I joined the Indoor Recreation Centre, Trivandrum, under Sri Sivaramakrishnan Nair, senior NIS coach. Since my dad had taught me the correct grip and also how to contact the shuttle properly, I learnt quickly and even won the first U-10 tournament I participated in and also won the State Championships that year. After Sivaramakrishnan Sir’s retirement, I trained under M L Narendran for three years. Father also gave me good practice till I entered my second year as a Sub Junior. I benifitted from a 6-week camp conducted by Mohanachandran Nair in Cochin in 2007 after which I won my first All India Sub Junior Singles titles at RSC,Cochin and the UBI tournament in Bangalore. I also benifitted from Mr. Nasser’s coaching during my trips with the Kerala State team. How has training in Trivandrum helped you? I had the good fortune of being under competent coaches who put my basics in place and they also inculcated discipline and the importance of regular training in me. My dad being a player was a major plus point. But, regular practice was not possible in Trivandrum as the courts were in bad maintenance, paucity of shuttles etc. I was also hampered by lack of a good gym and expert guidance in this regard. However, these disadvantages have made me value these things more and it makes me utilize the resources which are available to me now, to the fullest. I also feel that had I been in a good centre much earlier, there would have been a chance that I would have become stale due to too much training too early. All together, things have turned out well for me so far. First major break: I had won two All India Sub Junior Singles titles in my last year as Sub Junior, in 2007 and was tipped to win the National title.
Your success at the Youth Olympiad in Singapore:
The medallists at the Youth Olympics: Prannoy HS (Silver), Pisit Poodchalat (Gold) Unfortunately, I fell sick and lost in the quarter finals of the nationals. In the Junior Nationals in Nellore that year, I qualified and upset the highly fancied Aditya Prakash in the quarters to enter the semis. This was probably the biggest break in my career so far. This win enabled me to get selected to the Indian team for the Junior Asian Badminton Championships next year while only 16 and exposed me to Junior Badminton at the International level quite early. Normally, one gets to represent the country in juniors during his final year as a junior. At that stage, it is very difficult to get adjusted to the pace of the game and the drift in the Air conditioned halls and still perform well. But, for me, by the time I played the most important tournaments in my Junior career viz. the World Junior Championships 2010 & the Youth Olympics, I was prepared and ready for the competition and playing conditions. Your World Championship experience: I had trained hard for the junior Asian Championships 2010 in Malaysia but lost to a Chinese Taipei player in the first round itself. For the Worlds, I did not do any specific training and prepared and played without any tension. I was supposed to play a Malaysian who had finished runner up in the Junior ABC, in the second round itself. There was a redraw and the draw turned out to be better for me. The hall in Mexico was not air conditioned and playing conditions and the flight of the shuttle were perfect. This made a huge difference to me.
I had trained hard for the Youth Olympics. I met Feng Tse Hsieh of Chinese Taipei who I had beaten 21-9, 21-9 at the World Championships in the first round. It was a packed house and I beat him 21-13 in the first and was leading comfortably at 17-10 in the second. But he came back and beat me 21-18. He rode on a wave of crowd support and the third game was a neck to neck affair which I managed to win 24-22. In the semis, I beat the World Championship silver medalist Kang of Korea who had beaten me in Mexico. After losing the first game at 19, I played patiently and adjusted to the drift in the hall well to win 21-17, 2117 to reach the finals. In my finals against Pisit Poodchalat of Thailand, nothing went right for me from the beginning. Being an established player in the Men’s circuit for the last couple of years, he settled down earlier and ran up big leads in both the games. By the time I realized my folly and started playing tiring rallies, the lead was too big to bridge and I lost 15-21, 16-21. Your idols: I have always idolized Peter Gade and Taufik Hidayat and have quite a collection of their videos with me. Your training stint at the Gopi Chand Academy: There are many good players here and playing them gives me confidence. Gopi Sir is there from morning to evening and he is at hand to give us advice and tips about the game. There are 3 physical conditioners who always monitor our conditioning programme. All these help us perform well. The only thing to take care is to be professional enough to cope with the heavy load of training which is inevitable for any aspiring Badminton player.
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Oct-Nov 2010
Jorgensen keeps date with destiny Perfect day for Denmark as they win three titles on final day
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dense (Denmark):When Jan O Jorgensen ran around the hall with is head in his hands and beaming from ear to ear, it was the kid in him who had surfaced after all these years. The kid who once gaped at his hero Taufik Hidayat at the Denmark Open had now beaten the great Indonesian in Sunday’s final of the same event years later -- Jorgensen’s first Super Series title. It was a fairytale nearly as rich and inspiring as those of Hans Christian Andersen, whose presence is still alive in this city. Anderson’s house, now a museum, is a short walk from the Odense Idraetspark stadium, and such is his influence that children dressed up as the characters from his book carried the awards to the presentation ceremony. The day couldn’t have gone better for Denmark, as they won all three finals in which they figured -- the men’s singles, the mixed doubles, and the men’s doubles. Wang Yihan of China beat junior compatriot Liu Xin 21-14 21-12; Miyuki Maeda and Satoko Suetsuna of Japan got past Shizuka Matsuo/ Mami Naito (Jpn) 21-17 21-14, while Laybourn/ Kamilla opened up the day with a mixed doubles title for Denmark in the mixed doubles over Robertson/ Wallwork of England. Matias Moe/ Carsten Mogensen ended it on a perfect note for the hosts by beating Markis Kido/ Setiawan of Indonesia 21-13 21-12.
The men’s singles final had all the potential of a classic, for it pitted a master against a hardy young opponent, and there was a throwback to an earlier era of craft, finesse and variety over the pure speed and power of today. Jorgensen plays rather in the mould of his one-time teacher Morten Frost, while Taufik, possessor of a dazzling variety of strokes, plays with a style all his own. Like a spider constructing its web and yet sitting in its middle, Taufik was masterly to begin with, seeking to trap the young Dane in the web of his astonishing craft. Jorgensen was ensnared but he fought desperately to free himself. The Indonesian looks like a laggard, but his game is built on superb retrieval abilities, incredible footwork, and a wrist that follows every dictate of the mind. At 11-6, it looked like the young Dane was going to have a rough day. But what he lacked in ability, he had to make up with tenacity. That Jorgensen did admirably as he kept forcing Taufik into the extra shot, and slowly the errors crept in from Taufik’s racket. At times the match was rich in fare, at other times the errors hurt the flow of what could have been a great match. Jorgensen knew he had to take the net away from Taufik. That he did by attacking it at every opportunity, killing the shuttle whenever it rose a couple of inches over the
net cord. The Dane kept apace despite the pressure he was subjected to; nosing ahead in the homestretch of the first set. The second was more comfortable, for Taufik was gifting more points than he was making. “It’s a huge win,” said Jorgensen. “I stayed calm and was prepared for a long match. It’s difficult to read him, especially the crosscourt strokes, because his grip is different. You have to control the net against him and that’s what I did.” Taufik admitted that it was the errors that had done him in. “Jan played well, but I made too many mistakes,” he shrugged.
Prannoy reads GUTS. Do you?
Check your Badminton Quotient Who did Ajay Jayaram lose to in the final of the Dutch Open recently? SMS your answers to 9611833630 Please include your names with the answer
Answer to last edition's BQ:
Prannoy HS Winners: Antony Aloysius, Paresh, J Deepak, Vipul (J&K), Karthik M
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GUTS - A Window into World Badminton
Oct-Nov 2010
Sport for social welfare S
tina Willumsen, the Deputy Mayor of Odense City Council, challenges one’s notions on what an elected representative looks like. An athlete and a yoga buff, Willumsen has backpacked in Indonesia and Malaysia, and offers several insights into what sport can mean to a city. With the slogan ‘To Play is to Live’, the city of Odense has found its official identity in sport. Dev S Sukumar catches up with Willumsen to find out about this unique association: The slogan was introduced in 2008. Before that, did you have a positive relationship with sport? Yeah. If you make a slogan for a city, it has to be something that you’ve already worked with, and part of the identity of the city. The whole thinking of the creativity and innovation and play and sports was already part of the identity of the city when we made the slogan. We decided that it was so important that we wanted to enhance it. We still have a long way to go if we want to use it fully. From 2008, when you coined this slogan for Odense, do you see proportional decrease in social problems? We have used sports for many years to solve social problems, especially in the poorer areas of the city. We have specific parts of the city with problems, with immigrants and unemployment, and in those parts of the city we have collaborations between the football clubs and schools, and that has proved to be successful among young boys. We can see they would be criminals or unemployed when they grow up, and those problem kids we recruit to the clubs, and through that they learn discipline and friendship. They learn that if you want to achieve, you have to work hard, and sport can teach you all those good qualities. We’ve had a lot of success. If you have a young boy who’s not good at school, but good at sport, he can build his self-confidence through sport, and then maybe he will be able to continue work at school. So we try to connect things when we do social work. How much time in the council meetings is taken up by discussions of sport? We have divided tasks in the city under four committees. I’m the chairman of the committe for sports and children. Sport is an area everybody is interested in. All council members like to join those discussions, because everybody plays a sport or follows a team. Also because we like to use sport
as a part of our growth policy. When you have an event like this (Denmark Open), of course it is about sport, but it’s not just about sport. It’s also about branding Odense, about attracting businesses, about being known in other countries. So this event has attention from a lot of council members.
have to move a little faster in education.
It’s not unusual that young people are members of councils in Denmark. The youngest member of our council is 26. There are five in their 30s, but the majority is older.
And in sports?
How much money does the council channel into sport? We spend a lot of public funds on all sports clubs. Millions. If you want to start your own football club or team, you will get public funding. It’s like that in the whole of Denmark. If you can gather some members, we will not only fund it, we will find a place for you to play. Odense has 565 clubs, of which 400 are sports clubs. We also fund events and elite athletes with special programmes. The only condition for the club is that it has to be open for everybody, it cannot be only for men, or for the young. You can come to the municipality and we will help you, because we believe that if clubs organise themselves around sports, it benefits everybody. The more sports clubs, the better. But clubs cannot make a profit for themselves, they have to be non-profit. Would you want to move to the national political scene -- become a member of Parliament, and carry out these initiatives at that level? No, I don’t think so. There’s a lot of work to do here. If you are an MP it’s about legislation on a higher level, and here in the city council it’s about day-to-day life for ordinary citizens. There’s a lot of difference. It’s a question of what your temper is, how you like to work with politics. What are your ambitions for the city? I’m responsible for schools, and to improve education and schools is the most important thing. In these years in Denmark, we lose a lot of jobs to Asia, and we see that Danish companies are moving production to China or India, so we have to make up new jobs for our citizens. and that I think demands that we educate our population even better. So it’s important for Denmark, and we feel the competition especially from India, in technical areas like IT, where our education is not as goood as yours. So we
Odense is not big, and it’s not easy to get famous. We can do a lot more to brand Odense better. This year we participated in the World Expo in Shanghai, and that was a way to get more known. Events like the Denmark Open are a good way to brand or promote our city in other parts of the world. We would like to have events that we can have every year, returning events, so that the local population knows these events. Especially events that attract a lot of spectators, and then it’s important to have events that provide good experience for citizens. That’s why badminton is so good because we have a lot of players in Odense. We are negotiating to continue hosting the Denmark Open. What sports are you into? I exercise in a fitness centre, and I run. Running has become very popular in Denmark. I’m member of a yoga club, and do yoga once a week.
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Oct-Nov 2010
The Danish league A
mong the most fascinating aspects of badminton is the Danish league, the only one of its kind in the world. Despite being a small country of 5.5 million people, Denmark has produced a succession of top-class players, and most of this success is attributed to its competitive league system. Jens Buck-Jensen, President of elite division club Lillerod BC, describes the dynamics of the league: Could you describe the league structure? There are ten teams in the elite league and eight each in each of the lower divisions. There are more than 100 clubs overall. There are five divisions -- the elite league, first, second, third, and the regional series. Each club in a division meets the others once, and then there are playoff matches. And every year, at the end of the season, the best teams are promoted to the higher division. The structure of each division is different. In the (elite) league we play six rubbers in each match – one each in women’s singles, mixed, women’s and men’s doubles, and two men’s singles matches. In the first division, we play 13 matches, with each player playing two matches – one singles and one doubles. What are the challenges in running a club in the elite division? We have to create money through sponsors and membership fee. To be a member you pay a certain amount of money each year. In my club it is 600 kronor (approx Rs 4,900) each year, and if you play on the first team or third team, you pay 3000 kronor (Rs 24,861), covering wages to coaches, and shuttles during training.
who are around the area of the club. If they think we’re doing a good job, they pay a certain amount to the club. This is a contract negotiated for a year or two. Right now, we have an economic crisis in Europe, so private companies are holding back their contributions. Except the Denmark Open, we don’t have much badminton on TV. Danish TV2 transmits one league match once a month. So not all club matches are shown on TV. But if you have good players like Peter Gade, TV will be interested. Gade’s club will have a lot of matches on TV. My club is not, so we don’t have many sponsors. What relationship do you maintain with your sponsors? The sponsor pays a player through his club. The club is the intermediary. We invite the sponsor to different events, where we can exchange networks. When we play league matches we invite all sponsors for a VIP dinner; we watch the club matches, go back to the restaurant, and exchange business relations. That’s very imp, that’s the way to develop your business network. What infrastructure does your club have? We have six courts in the main hall and four practice courts in a second hall which is also used for other purposes. This is put to our disposal by the community (council). All the daily expenses for the hall are borne by the community. We only deal with the business of badminton.
Professional players have contracts, where we guarantee them a certain amount of money each year, allowing them to go abroad for the EBU (European Badminton Union) or domestic tournaments. We cover expenses for equipment and travel.
Our club is currently no.6 in the (elite) league. We’re not good enough to play for the championships. But if you go back to the 90s, we were champions in 1992,’93,’94 and ’95. We had (former Olympic gold medallist) Poul-Erik Hoyer Larsen as our main player. Peter Rasmussen (former world champion) was also in my club, but he wasn’t good enough for the first team. He later became world champion. There were many others.
What is the nature of club sponsorship?
What are players’ salaries like?
We normally have sponsors from the local community. Actually, we don’t have a main sponsor; we have a lot of smaller sponsors
Peter Gade (world No.2) is the one making the most money, 1 million kronor a year.
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Tine Baun was with my club until she was 21. When she succeeded Camilla Martin, she suddenly became a big star. In 2005, she became superstar in Denmark, and then her salary was raised tremendously. She must be making about quarter million a year – these figures are secret. I just know we couldn’t afford her. Is it possible for a top player to survive on badminton? No, most badminton players need a civil career, because you cannot make a living from badminton alone. Tine has a civil education. She’s a physiotherapist. Peter Gade has no civil education, but I think he will be a coach later.
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GUTS - A Window into World Badminton
Oct-Nov 2010
Taufik wins French Open SS T
used to play doubles with Nehwal when the Indian was still coming up, is the most socially committed player on the circuit. Last year she worked at two refugee camps in Uganda, conducting badminton clinics to help them overcome, to whatever extent, their everyday concerns. Post-retirement, Rice will work with people struggling to overcome addiction, depression and other blues.
aufik Hidayat ended the country’s year long drought in the Super Series title as he won the French Open Super Series. In the final, Taufik outclassed Danish shuttler Joachim Persson in a straight set match of 21-16, 21-11. The eightseed Dane, who beat his senior and the tournament’s top seed Peter Gade in the semifinals, was only able to force a tight game at the first half of the first game. The French Open was Taufik’s first victory in Paris, after coming in runnerup the past three years. The title was also Taufik’s and Indonesia’s first Super Series triumph for the year.
New journey beckons for Anna Rice Having bid goodbye to professional badminton with a loss against good friend Saina Nehwal in the quarterfinals of the Commonwealth Games, Anna Rice prepares to go into the ‘real world’ and in pursuit of her other passion – social work. Rice, who
“I will be working with a foundation in Vancouver called Choose Again,” says the chirpy Rice, who is married to fellow-international Bobby Milroy. “It’s an organisation that works with people who have depression and other adult problems that prevent them from achieving their potential. I’ve been associated with them for two years. When they heard I was retiring, they asked me if I wanted to work with them.”
Girls make it golden day A few centimetres decided the distance Indian badminton has come. Down match point in the last match of the final day of the Commonwealth Games, and India’s second position overall hinging on a gold, the shuttle landed on the right side of the baseline for Saina Nehwal. With that, she equalled the deficit against Malaysian opponent Wong Mew Choo, won the third game, and in doing so, created a flurry of records for India. With Ashwini Ponnappa and Jwala Gutta having won the women’s doubles earlier, the two gold medals clinched the second spot for India in the overall tally. Saina rated this as her finest moment, higher even than the three Super Series titles she’s won. “This is the most memorable,” she said. “The match was more difficult than all the other finals I’ve won. I’ve never been down match point in a final. I’m proud I was able to make India the number two nation in the Commonwealth.
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