Anup Sridhar knows the importance of the Indian Open but an ankle injury makes him a sceptic

Shuttler Anup Sridhar admits to a Hamletian dilemma when it comes to sporting clichés — to believe or not to believe hinges purely on whether the score-line is in his favour. But he flashes his symmetric grin and politely nods to every line urging him to ‘keep faith’, ‘stay positive’, and ‘never give up’. But the 24-year-old can’t stop chuckling at the futility of those phrases when all the positivity is snuffed out by a rampaging rival. In badminton, optimism can whoosh away in an average match-time of 1 hour 15 minutes.

“As clichéd as it sounds,” he begins — a believer on this day since he’s returned to light training after a foot injury and is not in too much pain — “but I’ve learnt over the last year that you need to believe in yourself.” It’s easy, he explains, to keep chanting that in the mind, but difficult to practice when thrown to the smashing-sharks on court.

It all fits when you’ve heroically won a marathon-match against former world no. 1, Olympic gold medallist and world champion Taufik Hidayat — as Sridhar famously did at the World Championships, marching into the quarters last year. It falls flat when you go down tamely in the opener of the German Open or the semi-finals of your national tournament.

“It was more about the way I lost there, without putting up a fight, that bothered me,” he says, heading into the Indian Open with fingers crossed after his recent injury. India’s highest-ranked player at 24, Sridhar is quite simply fighting a mini-Achilles’ curse. Nursing the plantar facia below the left ankle, Sridhar hasn’t quite pushed hard in training not wanting to risk aggravation.

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