Pullela Gopichand's entry into badminton was after a cricket rejection. Watch

Pullela Gopichand at the Moneycontrol Startup Conclave.

Pullela Gopichand, the coach of the Indian national badminton team, who has had a remarkable playing career as well, was asked by an AI anchor (called AI Kaur) at the Moneycontrol Startup Conclave 2023 in Bengaluru about his favourite sport apart from badminton.

“Hey Gopi big fan of yours. What’s the one sport you love to play other than badminton?” AI Kaur asked

“Although my knees don’t support it, I would love to play football,” Gopichand responded.

When revealed that Gopichand played cricket at a young age, the Dronacharya awardee said that his entry into badminton was fueled by a cricket rejection.

“Cricket is… I think we all played cricket. I got into badminton because I didn’t get admission in cricket,” the 49-year-old revealed.

Watch the video here:

#MCStartupConclave | Here's what #AIKaur asked @PGopichand73 about his favourite sport Live updates https://t.co/CDWwmIEdp7#ToughGetGoing@chandrarsrikant@peakxvpartners@IDFCFIRSTBank@awscloud@cisco_in@MiraeAsset_IN@mstock_in@SpanCom_inpic.twitter.com/yMaZ0cM4Sk

— Moneycontrol (@moneycontrolcom) July 7, 2023

Gopichand also recalled another incident that led to his becoming a badminton player.

He said he owes his career in badminton to a lucky failure in an engineering exam.

He said that he wrote an exam for an engineering course where he randomly ticked answers. He needed 45 marks to qualify for the course. Instead, he scored only 38.

“I wrote an engineering exam where 45 was the pass marks. I was randomly ticking stuff and I got 38,” Gopichand revealed, laughing.

The engineering exam that Pullela Gopichand (luckily) failed: ‘Would have been a disaster’

“If seven of those ticks had been right, I would have got a sports quota and ended up as an engineer, which would have been a disaster for the engineering side,” he concluded.

Pullela Gopichand was Indian national badminton champion five years in a row from 1996. He won the bronze medal at the 1998 Commonwealth Games. In 2001, he became the second Indian to win the All England Open Badminton Championships after Prakash Padukone.