[B]London Olympics: Saina Nehwal stronger than the Chinese
"Since its introduction at Barcelona 1992, India is watching the badminton event with eager anticipation for the first time, mainly due to Saina Nehwal's sterling show at international events in the last two or three years.
She has consistently performed at the highest level and is the main threat to the Chinese in world badminton. For a change, an Indian player can be termed mentally and physically stronger than the Chinese players and Saina has proved that in the run up to the Olympics.
The year in which she made her presence felt in world badminton was 2006. I was the chief coach of India during the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Aparna Popat was the top Indian women's singles player and Saina was the No. 2. During our group match in the preliminary stages, India lost 0-5 to England. Aparna surprisingly lost her match against Tracey Hallam. Saina was sitting next to me watching the match. She very clearly told me then that she could beat Tracey.
I was slightly taken aback because she sounded confident yet not arrogant. In our team meeting later in the day, I along with Hadi, our Indonesian doubles coach, decided to field Saina in our remaining matches. All the players were slightly concerned with this decision, but Saina did not let me down. She went on to win all her matches including the ones over Tracey and Singapore's Li Li — both top players — to fetch us bronze.
Coming back to the Olympics, the Badminton World Federation has made changes to the tournament format by making it league-cum-knockout in nature. This is to a certain extent good for the players as they get more opportunities to perform.
In men's singles, P Kashyap is drawn in a group with Belgian Yuhan Tan and Vietnam's Nguyen Tien Minh. Kashyap has beaten both of them in the past and can top the group. He is then likely to run into Kenichi Tago of Japan (seeded 8).
In the women's doubles, Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa are in a group with teams from Chinese Taipei, Singapore and Japan. After their good show in the world championships last year, they have not performed creditably. But, they have beaten all the three combinations at least once before.
Our mixed doubles combination of Jwala and V Diju has the toughest proposition among Indians and they need to perform above themselves to beat the Indonesian, Danish and Korean pairs.
(The writer is a two-time national champion and ex-chief coach)"
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The Elephant has sent forth their champion and surprisingly she is a strong one indeed. Women s badminton will be very interesting to follow this Olympics.