SAI clears proposal to hire Siyadath as coach under TOPS

The Sports Authority of India (SAI) has brought India's assistant coach Mohammed Siyadath Ullah under the ambit of TOP scheme to help the Indian badminton trio of Kidambi Srikanth, HS Prannoy and Sameer Verma in their preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The Indian trioka had sent a combined proposal to SAI to hire Siyadath as coach and SR Ganesh as physical trainer, keeping in mind the Olympic qualification for the Tokyo Games.

"Siyadath has been one of the main coaches in our group for last couple of years and he has been the guy who has been travelling with us for most of the tournaments because Gopi Sir (Pullela Gopichand) cannot travel for lot of major tournaments," Prannoy said.

"Park (Park Tae Sang) from Korea has also joined since February. Siyadath has been one of the main coach after Park and Gopi Sir, so it was really important for them to be in the TOP scheme.

"We are going to travel a lot in this one year and being a Olympic qualification year, it is important that we have the funding to get the main coach along for each and every tournament," he stressed.

The 35-year-old Siyadath has been with the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy (PGBA) in Hyderabad since 2004 and has been India assistant coach since 2010.

A former player, Siyadath shares a good bond with the current players. In his role as a coach for the last 15 years, he has often been seen giving his valuable feedback during mid-game breaks to the players.