HS Prannoy credits Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu India's positive mindset

HS Prannoy credits Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu India's positive mindset

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HS Prannoy has asserted that Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu’s wins on the international stage is responsible for the positive mindset that Indian players have today. He also said that seeing Saina and Sindhu win at big tournaments, many Indian players started to believe in achieving similar feats.

Prannoy was present at the prize distribution ceremony of the 25th GD Birla Memorial Masters Inter-Club Badminton Tournament at the Bombay Gymkhana along with P Gopichand and Nandu Natekar when he said that the wins posted by Sindhu and Saina in big tournaments were responsible for the positive mindset that can be seen in the Indian players today.

"The one thing which changed among all of us was the belief (to win). (And) in the last five to six years I could see the change. Before (earlier) we used to go out there and when we (saw) big names, we used to say it's tough. Nowadays whenever we see the big names we are much more confident," said Pray reported by PTI.

Saina has won 21 titles in her career till date and is ranked 10 in the world. She won a bronze medal at the 2012 Olympic Games - the first in India's history - when her Chinese opponent Wang Xin retired from the match midway due to an injury. On the other hand, Sindhu who is currently ranked 3 in the world is the owner of 10 career titles along with her silver medal at the 2016 Rio Games. 

According to Prannoy, when Saina and Sindhu started winning big tournaments and started beating Chinese players, the other players too started believing that they could also achieve a similar feat.

"The first time when I started playing (against) them there was a lot of respect and things which made me play a very silent game," he said.

"First when we used to play them we used to give them a lot of respect. When I started playing badminton I never thought I could play against these big names or at this Super Series level or at the World Championships.

"That was the one thing that changed and over the years the belief, especially in the last one or two years. A lot of credit goes to Saina and Sindhu because they were the ones who started it. And when they started to win the bigger events, when they started to beat the Chinese continuously, that's when all the rest of the members in the (Indian) team got the self-belief saying if they can do it, then why not us."

Gopichand also said that there has been a change in the mindset of the current players playing for the country.

"When I look at the change in badminton, for me the change is not only in the players of badminton but in the youth in general. When I went to Olympics in 2000 or the Games prior to that, about 80-90 percent of us, who went, almost went with an idea that we will go there, and (since) winning was not on our minds, we would go, be happy collecting souvenirs, clicking photographs. The mindset was not really to win.

"But when I went again in 2008 and 2012, although we may not have won huge medals, the mindset of people had changed. Every athlete who went to the Olympics thought of winning a medal and they wanted to win a medal and that was a big difference between earlier generation and now," concluded Gopichand.

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