Badminton: Indian shuttlers to get foreign coaches

The Indian Badminton team will be set for a reform soon after reports suggest that the squad is set to receive the services of renowned Korean and Indonesian coaches to help with Singles, Doubles and the Junior squad. Badminton in India saw its peak under coach Mulyo Hondoyo who worked closely with the Singles team alongside Pullela Gopichand. Since his departure in November 2017, Gopichand has been handling the Singles team alone. Olympics Bronze medalist from Athens, Indonesian Flandy Limpele, Asian Games gold medalist, Kim Ji Hyun Olympian Park Tae Sang are all set to join the Badminton cog of the country. Ji Hyun will become the first female foreign coach to work with the Singles team of the country, as reported by Times of India. Both Park and Ji Hyun are former members of the South Korean coaching team. Flandy, in addition to fellow Indonesian Namrih Suroto will be joining the National camp by the end of this month according to reports and the two will be working with Tan Kim Her who again has revolutionised Doubles badminton in the country. Indonesian Ade Kurniawan is also being added to the team as a sparring partner. One particular player whose performance seems to have especially suffered due to Hondoyo's exit has been Srikanth Kidambi who, under the erstwhile coach, became the first Indian male shuttler to bag four Super Series titles in a single year. 2018 went largely mediocre for Srikanth in that comparison after a fantastic run the year before. 40 National level shuttlers train at the Pullela Gopichand Academy the year round while PV Sindhu, Olympic silver medalist, prefers a different venue herself. Finding and dividing time between each and every shuttler becomes too big an ask for one single man. However, with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics just around the corner, it is important to tie up these lose ends which is why the news of these appointments is welcome. "All of them are very talented coaches and I am sure their shuttlers will benefit from their knowledge and experience," Pullela Gopichand was quoted as saying by TOI.