Can P.V. Sindhu rediscover her rhythm in Hangzhou? Premium

PV Sindhu faces a tough challenge to regain her form and win medals at the Asian Games and Olympics. With her pedigree, she has the potential to succeed, but it depends on her motivation and desire to win.

Nothing in sport is as ubiquitous as failure. A goalkeeper fluffing a regulation save, a wicketkeeper dropping a straightforward catch, a long-jumper touching the ground beyond the take-off board — every such public failure is a humiliating fall in the mud.

Failures are also star-blind and reputation-agnostic. Virat Kohli cannot go three years without scoring a Test hundred. Serena Williams should not lose four Grand Slam finals in a row. Tiger Woods must not be winless for over a decade at the golf Majors.

The latest to be scarred for failing to live up to the loftiest of expectations is P.V. Sindhu. One of India’s most decorated athletes, the badminton star is a two-time Olympic medallist, a world champion, Commonwealth Games gold and Asian Games silver medallist.

But since winning the Commonwealth gold in Birmingham in August 2022, Sindhu has gone more than a year without climbing to the top of the podium. She has reached just one final in this period, at the Madrid Masters, where she lost 8-21, 8-21 to Indonesia’s Gregoria Tunjung, a player she had beaten in all of their previous meetings. Against a career singles win-loss record of 431-187 (70%), she has lost nearly every second match in 2023 (20-19, 51%).

At the All England Open, she didn’t win a rubber, and last month she lost her first encounter at the World Championships in Copenhagen, a dispiriting 14-21, 14-21 reverse to the former world champion from Japan, Nozomi Okuhara. It was the earliest she had lost at the Worlds since her first medal as an 18-year-old in Guangzhou 2013. 

As the Hangzhou Asian Games beckons in the immediate term, and the 2024 Paris Olympics looms on the horizon, her worrisome form is the subject of a raging nationwide debate.

“She should first find her rhythm,” says Aparna Popat, a former National badminton champion and Arjuna awardee. “Ideally, if she was in form and things would have gone well, the Asian Games is a competition where she would have hoped to get a medal. And looking at her past, we know that she is very well capable.