2022 BWF World Championships: India's strongest contenders for medals in Tokyo

(standing, from left) Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy (Image: Twitter/NarendraModi)

A badminton world championship without P.V. Sindhu? Unfortunately, that’s the reality as the BWF Worlds got underway today at the Metropolitan Gymnasium in Tokyo, with India’s prolific star—the first Indian to win a world championship when she grabbed the title in 2019—ruled out of the tournament with a stress fracture to her foot. Word from her camp is that the injury, suffered during her victorious 2022 Commonwealth Games campaign, is not too serious and she will be back in training in a week’s time.

But it still robs this world championships of some star power, the intrigue of a women’s singles field jostling with great players, and Sindhu of what may well have been a sixth medal, if not the title itself, to go past the record of five world medals that she shares right now with China’s two-time Olympic champion Zhan Nang.

Sindhu has done it all at badminton’s biggest annual stage—winning a bronze on debut as an 18-year-old in 2013, and repeating the feat in 2014. Then, after a period where Sindhu began to truly develop into the world-beating player we know today, came the dominating run to three successive world championship finals: in 2017, in one of the finest battles she has ever been a part of, Sindhu lost the final to Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara. In 2018, Spain’s Carolina Marin, with whom Sindhu has fostered one of the great on-court rivalries of recent time, beat her to the gold. Third time did the trick, as Sindhu outplayed Okuhara in every department in the 2019 final to become the first Indian to win the world title.

Also read: BWF World Championships: Praneeth losses, Ashwini-Sikki, Tanisha-Ishaan win on day 1

Now that we are done mourning the injury-absence of Sindhu, what chances do India have at the ongoing tournament in Tokyo? It’s truly hard to say. That’s partly to do with Sindhu’s absence, partly the form of Indian players who are actually at the tournament, and partly the form of some top players in the world who will be using the worlds as a comeback platform.

In the women’s singles, Saina Nehwal will be India’s sole representative—the 2015 finalist and 2017 bronze medallist was the pioneer who changed Indian badminton forever, but it is unrealistic and unfair to expect a medal from her as she moves towards the end of her career, in a tournament bristling with such ferocious talent that any one of at least five different women can walk away with the title.

Consider that Marin, who missed the Tokyo Olympics and the 2021 World Championships in her hometown Huelva, Spain, is staging a comeback after a serious knee injury in 2020. Marin is the kind of player who takes the stage only when she knows she is at her peak and ready to compete at the highest level, which means, if she has decided to play at the Worlds, she thinks she has a good chance to add to her three world titles.

Then there are some great players who have never won a world title and would be motivated to a very high degree to make it happen this time around. That includes Taiwan’s Tai Tzu Ying, the compact, dynamite star whose deceptive game is second to none, but who is yet to fulfil her full potential by winning an Olympic or world title. The three-time All England champion had a curious 2021—both fantastic and just a bit short—going down to China’s Chen Yufei in a closely-fought encounter in the Tokyo Olympics final, and watching Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi run away with the world championship final with her speedy, metronymic game.

Yufei and Yamaguchi, the Olympic and world champion, are clearly the two favourites going into the tournament.

Also read: Tokyo World Badminton Championships: Stage set for that elusive world title

There’s more promise for India in the men’s singles, in the form of Kidambi Srikanth, H.S. Prannoy and Lakshya Sen.

Srikanth made the final last year, losing in straight games to Singapore’s Loh Kean Yew, so why is he not among the favourites? Well, he is, and he isn’t. Because on his best day he can be unbeatable, but it’s hard to predict when that day comes around. He made the final of the worlds last year, but his run since 2018 has been almost completely bare of tournament wins, so much so that he did not even make the cut for the Tokyo Olympics.

Prannoy has had an interesting year leading up to the worlds—at the beginning of 2021, he was almost out of reckoning on the global stage, close to quitting the game altogether, before he began to pull things back, beating Olympic champion Victor Axelsen at the Indonesia Masters in 2021, and making it to the quarterfinals at the last world championships, where he was beaten by the eventual champion, Loh. Then there was his superb run in India’s maiden Thomas Cup victory this year. But does he have the consistency to run the course at the world championship, with players like Axelsen and Loh among many others standing in his way?

One man who has shown that he does have it in him, and who has had such a remarkable start to the season that no one can deny him the tag of at least the underdog who can go all the way, is Lakshya Sen.

One of the finest players in the world as a junior, Sen’s transition to the senior level, already a fraught and complicated change, was made even more difficult by the pandemic in 2020, just as he was taking his first steps at the top level. The stop-and-start nature of sports in pandemic-afflicted 2020 and 2021 means it would be fair to consider this as Sen’s first proper season.

In December, Sen made the semis of the World Championship on his first appearance, losing to Srikanth. At the German Open in 2022, he beat Axelsen. A week later, at the All England, he made a sensational run to the final, losing to Axelsen in a brilliant match. He took Olympic medallist Anthony Ginting, of Indonesia, down in the Thomas Cup final this year. Sen is discovering thrilling levels to his game, and finding out that he is a natural on the big stage. That augurs very well for him and Indian badminton—if there’s one medal at the worlds with India written on it, it would be Sen’s.

Also read: 2022 Commonwealth Games: Lakshya Sen's CWG gold may be a sign of even greater things to come for Indian badminton

Finally, but no less important, is the rise of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty in men’s doubles—the fun-loving, chest-bumping duo came to notice as India’s answer to a long-suffering question as to why the country does not produce good men’s doubles pairs, and they have been slowly working away at fulfilling that promise, beginning with India’s first gold medal in men’s doubles at the 2022 CWG. A medal at the worlds is not out of reach for them and will only add more momentum to what promises to be the beginning of a fine run.