Former India coach Vimal Kumar feels that Kidambi Srikanth and HS Prannoy need to have an alternative plan when put under pressure if they want to win medals at the upcoming Asian Games in Indonesia.
Srikanth lost in straight games to ageing Malaysian Daren Liew, while Prannoy went down to unheralded Igor Coelho of Brazil to crash out of the World Championship at the prequarterfinals stage.
"I am really disappointed with Srikanth and Prannoy. They need to find the consistency. You need to play differently when something doesn't work. They are not being able to do that. Both of them are attacking players and when things go differently, they are not able to cope. That have to make that adjustment," Kumar told PTI during an interaction.
What has disappointed Kumar is the fact that Srikanth couldn't capitalise on Lee Chong Wei's absence from the World Championship.
"Srikanth should have capitalised as Chong Wei's pulling out opened the bottom half of the draw. Liew didn't have any big result. Sometimes, you can take a game from a top player but he is not of the same level as Prannoy or Srikanth. So it was not a good result for Srikanth," the former national coach was frank in his assessment.
"But anything can happen at the Asian Games, because the top level badminton players play with such indifferent form, no one is playing anything special except Momota."
"Otherwise, it was boring to watch men's singles. There was no constructive rallies, there was no quality matches this time. But definitely, Momota is the most exciting player at the world now. Nobody troubled him. He has the game to dominate the likes of Chong Wei and Lin Dan."
"It comes every year and she will be able to do that. She shouldn't worry. She needs to be just forget it and now Asian Games is coming back and other girls would be there."
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