Focus on winning tournaments, not just ranking: Prakash Padukone

Benagluru: There were plenty of highs and a significant amount of lows over the last two decades for badminton in India. Though the mixed bag of performances from Indian players at the international stage has attracted constant attention to the sport, legend Prakash Padukone feels the time is ripe for the nation to aim towards becoming a dominant force in badminton. 

“They (the current crop of top shuttlers) are doing well, but I think they can do much better,” said the 70-year-old, the first from the country to win the prestigious All England Championships in 1980. 

“I think they need to be much more consistent, considering the kind of support they get. Each one has their own team of coach, physio, strength and conditioning coach, nutritionist, sparring player. I am not against that, but considering this kind of support, I think, they can do more. They should not be happy winning one tournament once in six months or two years,” offered Padukone while speaking to a select media on the sidelines of announcement of the alliance between Padukone School of Badminton (PSB) and Shriram Finance Ltd. 

With a crowded Badminton World Federation (BWF) tournament schedule, the Padma Shri awardee stressed the importance of picking events to maximise performance. In essence, Padukone hoped players of today emphasised more on quality over quantity. 

“Everybody needs to choose their tournaments very wisely. But these days, with the ranking points awarded every week, they focus more on where they stand on the ranking charts. If I was playing now, I would focus more on winning tournaments, even if my ranking goes down. 

“Because, at the end of your career, you are remembered for winning big tournaments more than the number of weeks a player was no. 1 in the world. I am not saying that ranking is not important, but you should achieve the top rank by winning the big events not by playing more tournaments. The present day players may not agree with my view, but this is just my opinion.” 

Speaking about BWF’s decision to reduce the three games of 21-point scoring system to 15 points of three beginning January 2027, Padukone said: “I would ideally like the 21-point format to remain while experimenting with the 15-point format in a small way. Similar to cricket, when they can have T20, ODIs and Tests co-existing, why can’t we do it in badminton too? Don’t discard the 21-point format completely because people have played for 10-15 years and gotten used to it,” opined the former world No. 1. 

While keeping a close watch on all the developments of badminton at the top level, Padukone expressed his focus has now shifted towards developing the sport at the grassroots through PSB which has 75 centres across the country. 

“The need of the hour when I started my academy in 1994 was to set-up a high-performance centre for top players to have a year-long practice base to compete with the Chinese or Indonesians. So after having coached and taken care of elite players for over 30 years, I want to now invest my time to develop badminton at the grassroot level with a proper structure, talent hunt and training coaches. Our focus is identifying talent from tier-2 and tier-3 cities.” said Padukone.