Stoic shuttler: Kidambi Srikanth has seen dizzying heights and deep lows

The first Indian man to win silver at the BWF World Championships, Srikanth has seen dizzying heights and deep lows. He chooses to be unperturbed by the ebb and flow of life, writes Vaibhav Raghunanda

“It’s weird, no?” the face at the other end of the screen says. “It’s strange to do this looking into a device.” And it is. More so, considering the last time Kidambi Srikanth and I sat down for an interview, it was across from each other, in person, in a hotel room in Delhi. This was late 2017, when Srikanth became only the fourth person in badminton history to win four BWF Super Series titles in one year — a feat that is as rare as it is difficult. A few months on, he went on to become the World No 1 — another first for a male Indian shuttler. It seems a lifetime away but Srikanth remembers — the interview itself vaguely, the phenomenal year fondly.

Since then there has been a churn. Du­r­ing that supremely taxing and profit­able season, Srikanth suffered what became a series of unfortunate injuries, a loss of form when in recovery, and a subsequent slide in the rankings, all of which meant from being a shoo-in contender for a medal, he soon became a player desperate to get the ranking points to qualify for the Olympics last year. And he may well have, despite all of it, if it hadn’t been for Covid-19. The pandemic meant multiple tournaments were cancelled, leaving him with very few to perform well in to get the points required. Despite all the records and the firsts achieved in the Olympic cycle, he ended up missing out on the Tokyo Olympics itself.

It is late morning, and we are banding together for brunch. Me: at home in Giridih, Jharkhand, with oats, fruits and coffee. He: in his room in Hyderabad, avoiding eating at this random hour (it’s around 10 am) because he’s on a strict schedule. Nonetheless, he casually sips on a glass of milk.

This nonchalance isn’t put on; it is all for real. Kidambi Srikanth refuses to get emotionally drawn out. In 2017, when on a roll, he refused to celebrate his achieve­ments too hard. And, in the aftermath, he has refused to drown in misery. “It was tough missing out on the Olympics, of course,” Srikanth says. “But I’ve learnt to not dwell on things that have passed.” Those close to him, his brother K Nanda­gopal and his childhood friends came to­gether, expecting him to turn inward, but he didn’t. Post-Tokyo, as the badminton season put itself back together, Srikanth played tournaments regularly, hoping that he’d be in good form leading into the World Championships — and then almost didn’t get there, unable to secure a visa till three days before the event began.

“That’s one lesson I think I have learnt. And maybe this pandemic has enhanced it. You can’t control everything, but what you can, you should. I just wanted to play… take it one match at a time,” says the 29-year-old, smiling gently. The choice of words is deliberate. It’s athlete trope but here it means more. When expectations fizzle out, what happens to desire?

It seemed less a question of sports than a zen koan: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

In Srikanth’s case, this is perhaps his best being. When he thinks less, he does more. And after all the lows , there have been highs.

In December 2021, he went to Spain expecting nothing, only to become the first Indian man to win silver at the BWF World Championships. And then, from that high, again the unexpected. He was back in Hyderabad not out of choice, for­ced to pull out of the India Open (a tourn­ament he loves playing) having tested positive for Covid-19, and then pulling out of the Syed Modi International to give himself time to recover. You can’t control everything, but what you can, you should.

And what you can, are the basics. Train, eat, recover and repeat. Athletes are incredibly nit-picky about their routines, especially when it comes to their diets. Their bodies, after all, aren’t just vessels of consciousness but, quite literally, vehicles of gain — but even among them, India’s badminton specialists are a step apart. I’d met P V Sindhu when she was a teenager, fresh off winning her first World Championship bronze, and at the time, she’d professed a love for ice-cream and in the same breath admitted she hadn’t eaten one in months. She sat across the table, watching me gorge on Hyderabadi biryani for well over an hour. If she was tortured, she didn’t show it.

Srikanth is a bit different. “I don’t have a favourite food… I like home-cooked food, I guess,” he says. His breakfast (home-cooked dosa and chutney) is eaten before he goes for early morning training, and he almost entirely follows through on home-cooked food when not in competition. When in competition, things change, though not drastically.

“To be honest, this bio bubble, being stuck in hotel rooms, doesn’t bother me much,” he says. What he admittedly does miss is going out to eat in different cities he plays at across the globe. And while his taste in food itself varies very little, it allows him to take in and absorb cultures.

But all things are relative. Discomfort most. Srikanth, while a world-class athlete, is also deeply connected to his roots in Guntur (Andhra Pradesh) and is aware of the devastation the pandemic has wreaked on small communities. “I’m lucky to get to do what I do,” he says softly. “If ever I doubt the cards I’ve been dealt, all I have to do is think about everyone else who doesn’t have this.”

This is an often overlooked privilege of Indian sport. Many athletes have recently admitted to realising it. Despite the often haphazard and somewhat underfunded grassroots apparatus, infrastructure and facilities have survived. Sponsorships and funding have not dried up entirely.

Even when things are falling around you and unpredictability reigns, you know that your training facilities are still around waiting for you to return.

“It’s one of the benefits of the centre (Pullela Gopichand’s badminton academy that serves as a training base for almost all of India’s top shuttlers) that it’s available to us all the time,” Srikanth says. “We know that very few people will go there, and those that do are colleagues and teammates… so we are safe.” Another long sip of the milk follows.

Withdrawal from the two big home badminton events means that Indian badminton’s reluctant prince has yet to be serenaded properly. But for the man who played without expectations and refuses to get drowned by others’, this latest rise is narrative flow. Up and down and up again. For now, he’s happy to take it as it goes.

“It is good to plan,” he says, “but it is important to take things as they go. Everything else will follow.” That is the sound of one hand clapping.