Excited, but not quite jumping around

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.

“But qualifying for the Olympics with a good draw, and hence the Asian Championships in another ten days’ time is very crucial. Hyderabad’s a Gold GP and there are a lot of points on offer, which makes it important, but not at the risk of injury,” he says.

The nationals have served as a wake-up call, since he hasn’t won the title for the last two years. “It wasn’t the best way to start in 2007, but things picked up as the year went,” he rewinds to a year back.

“So I’d call this a good omen even for this year,” he quips. Taking a game off world No 1 Lin Dan at the All England earlier this March followed by victory over No 17 Shoji Sato, before the heel complained and forced him to retire, Sridhar comes into Indian Open on good form, not necessarily peak fitness.

... contd.