Badminton in India is certainly on the bend. A Four-Star event to host, a Chinese coach, Pullela Gopichand’s appointment as the national coach et al, the Badminton Association of India (BAI) has made all the right moves forward so far.

Now, the BAI is planning to push the Government to clear all it’s 10 qualifiers for the 2006 World Championships scheduled to be held at Madrid from September 18-24. This extra push was necessary. Because in the last edition in Anaheim, California, a similar number of players had qualified, but only Arvind Bhatt in men’s singles, Aparna Popat in women’s singles and Sanave Thomas and Rupesh Kumar in men’s doubles were cleared by the Government.

On that instance the BAI left it for the Government to decide on the players to be cleared for to Anaheim. But not so this time around as they have pressed the Government hard to clear the full contingent for the mega event. And they are hopeful too of getting all 10 players — Chetan Anand, Anup Sridhar, Saina Nehwal, Trupti Murgunde, Jwala Gutta, Shruti Kurien, Sana, Rupesh, V Diju and B R Meenakshi — on the flight to Madrid.

This hope arising from the fact that the performance of the country’s top shuttlers in recent times has been pretty good and the BAI wants to cash in on that. Just a reminder, that the men’s team reached the quarter finals of the Thomas Cup, a first, and more recently Gopichand’s protege Saina Nehwal became the first Indian to win a Four-Star badminton tournament, another first to boot.