Hoping for a winning racquet

Anup Sridhar has a reputation as a giant killer in badminton. Next stop, Beijing.

Badminton has been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently. The fiasco over getting shuttles and the way the Badminton Federation of India (BFI) acted over the whole issue left a bad taste among the shuttlers.

But national champion and the country's number-one player Anup Sridhar remains focussed on qualifying for the Beijing Olympics. "The controversy could have been avoided, but I am glad it's all over now and we can focus on the game."

The 26-year-old Sridhar has earned the reputation of being a giant killer. In 2007, he upset a lot of top-ranked players and his rise in badminton has been quite phenomenal.

He attained a career-best ranking of 25th in the world, though an international title still eludes him. "There are quite a few areas of my game which I am working on and hopefully the results will follow."

Sridhar took up badminton at an early age and has been under the tutelage of former All-England champion Prakash Padukone at his academy. He gives a lot of credit to Padukone for being his mentor, and says that he has learnt a lot from him "both on the court as well as off the court".

He feels that he had the talent but it was the help and support which the academy gave him which made all the difference. "Apart from coaching me and providing me the facilities, they made sure I played at international tournaments at a young age, which helped me a lot."

Learning from a legend like Padukone again was a massive influence on him both as a player and as an individual. "He taught me the importance of being calm and focussed in all situations, something which I lacked while playing top players."

Sridhar believes that Indian badminton has a lot of good players at the moment who are capable of achieving great things.

"In the past we have had one individual or at the most two doing well, now we have four or five players doing a good job." Arvind Bhat, Chetan Anand, Anand Pawar are all among the 100 top-ranked players in the world.

So how does he get along with his compatriots? "I am good friends with Arvind and there is healthy competition among us, which eggs us on to do well." And of course, there is Saina [Nehwal] on the women's front doing very well, he adds.

The highlight of his career was the World Championship in Kuala Lumpur when he beat the Olympic champion Taufiq Hidayat. Sridhar ranks that as one of his finest performances.

He feels that it's still early days for him and he needs to do a lot to be considered a world-class player. "I need to be more consistent in beating top players and have been working hard on it."

He is still disappointed at the early exit of the national team from Thomas Cup qualifiers but feels that with the talent the team can do a lot of good in the future. He hasn't set any long-term goals "" "I don't like to plan things too much", he says "" but he wants to make it to Beijing. "It would be a fantastic honour to represent my country at the Olympics."

So far only Nehwal has confirmed her ticket to Beijing among the shuttlers and Sridhar is desperate to make it. For that he would need to hold on to the number one spot in the country to make the cut.

Sridhar has also roped in foreign coach Tom John to help him with his game. "He is a fantastic coach with loads of experience and I hope to improve my game under his guidance."

John, who has coached Padukone and Gopi Chand earlier has a lot of experience and is considered to be one of the best coaches around.

In case Sridhar makes it to Beijing, what would his goal be? "As I said, I don't set any goals and like to take it one step at a time." One can't blame him for nurturing a hope for a medal at Beijing "" provided that he makes it.