How Indian badminton slid from Olympic medals to crushing defeats

The Indian badminton team is off to a forgettable start at the Sudirman Cup, suffering a 1-4 defeat at the hands of Denmark in their opening Group D clash on Sunday with the women’s doubles pair of Tanisha Crasto and Shruti Mishra helping their team avoid a 0-5 rout with a victory in straight games.

With badminton powerhouse Indonesia, who completed a clean sweep over England on Sunday, also placed in the same group, India’s chances of advancing to the quarter-finals of the event in China’s Xiamen were slim from the very beginning.

What further minimised their chances of going the distance in the 19th edition of the prestigious tournament was leading men’s doubles pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty getting ruled out of the tournament due to illness, with the Badminton Association of India (BAI) not naming their replacement in the squad.

Then again, the kind of slide that badminton has been going through in this part of the world in recent years, India weren’t really the favourites to begin with in the biennial mixed-team event where they have reached the quarter-finals just twice since the inaugural edition in 1989.

How India announced itself as a force to be reckoned with over the past decade

India had produced iconic players in the past such as Prakash Padukone and Pullela Gopichand, both of whom had won the men’s singles title at the prestigious All England Badminton Championships with the former also a bronze medallist at the World Championships.

Saina Nehwal, however, would herald the beginning of a new era in Indian badminton when she won the country’s first Olympic medal in the sport with a bronze in London 2012. Four years later, PV Sindhu would nearly win a historic gold at the Rio Olympics, suffering a narrow loss against Spain’s Carolina Marin to collect silver.

Three years later, Sindhu would make history by becoming the first Indian to be crowned world champion in the sport, defeating Nozomi Okuhara in the final of the 2019 BWF World Championships in Basel, Switzerland. Two years later, the Hyderabadi shuttler would enter an elite club of Indian athletes to win multiple Olympic medals, collecting bronze in Tokyo 2020.

It wasn’t just Saina and Sindhu making history; Kidambi Srikanth had become only the third Indian overall and the second man to becoming the world’s top-ranked player in April 2018 and Padukone (1980) and Nehwal (2015). Both HS Prannoy and Lakshya Sen would go on to win singles bronze at the World Championships, as would Satwik and Chirag in men’s doubles.

The years 2022 and 2023 had even more historic moments in store, with India winning gold at the Thomas Cup as well as team silver at the Hangzhou Asian Games, where Satwik and Chirag won doubles gold.

While Padukone and Gopichand were part of different generations, the rise of Saina, Sindhu, Srikanth through the 2010s and the emergence of Sen and Satwik-Chirag in recent years instilled gave rise to the belief that India had finally discovered its golden generation of shuttlers, much like chess in 2024.

Indian badminton going downhill since Paris 2024

There were a lot of expectations from the Indian badminton contingent in the Paris Olympics last year after their stunning performance in the Asian Games in September and October of 2023. The nation had won a solitary medal in each of the last three editions of the Olympics, and there were expectations of multiple Indian shuttlers securing a podium finish in the French capital.

Only one came close to a medal in the end, with Sen, who had knocked compatriot Prannoy out in the Round of 16, suffering a heart-breaking loss against Malaysia’s Lee Zii Jia in their bronze medal playoff. Medal favourites Satwik and Chirag had bowed out in the quarter-finals while Sindhu could go as far as R16.

Indian shuttlers have not won a major title since 2023, including at the India Open in January where Satwik-Chirag were the only Indians featuring in the semi-finals across all categories. It was a similar story at the Malaysia Open that had taken place in the same month, with the young doubles pair bowing out in the semis.

And despite fielding a strong squad, India were knocked out of the Badminton Asia Mixed Team Championships with a 0-3 loss against Japan in the quarter-finals.

More recently at the All England Championships, Sen and the women’s doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand were the only Indians to reach the quarter-finals, with both matches ending in a defeat.

The concern, however, does not end there for Indian badminton, with the lack of quality players since the the rise of Sen as well as Satwik-Chirag and Jolly-Gopichand putting a question mark over the depth of talent.

And injury concerns to senior players such as Sindhu, whose form has gone downhill in recent years precisely because of that reason, means India are left with next to no medal hopes once their current stars are out of the picture.

Here’s hoping that the current phase is just a lull in what has otherwise been a story of incredible growth. There’s still plenty of time to go Indian badminton to get back on its feet ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics after all.