How Indian badminton stayed in the conversation without big conquests

As the new season dawned after a subdued BWF World Tour Finals episode, Indian badminton finds itself in limbo — neither in free fall nor on a golden high.

The year 2025 did not deliver the sort of title count or sustained presence among the world’s best that once seemed routine. But India did not entirely fade from the sport’s global conversation. That distinction, limited as it may sound, was carried almost entirely by one pairing: Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty.

The men’s doubles duo ended 2025 without a title, a rarity in their otherwise decorated partnership but remained India’s most reliable presence in the latter stages of top-tier tournaments. Sat-Chi played 16 tournaments and reached finals twice and made 9 top-four appearances.

Across Super 500, Super 750 and Super 1000 level, they appeared frequently in quarterfinals and semifinals, occasionally pushing into finals, often emerging as India’s last remaining challenge though they fell short of converting opportunities into titles. For most countries, such returns might suggest regression but for India it highlighted scarcity.

Their season was respectable primarily because it prevented Indian badminton from slipping out of the elite conversation, even as it represented many steps down from the duo’s own past benchmarks.

Moments not momentum

Lakshya Sen began the year as India’s strongest bet in Men’s singles discipline, carrying the expectation that he would anchor the transition into the post-Tokyo, pre-Los Angeles cycle.

The issue was not an absence of quality, Lakshya remained capable of troubling the world’s best. The 24-year-old’s standout moment came at the Australian Open Super 500 in Sydney, where he ended a long title drought with a straight-games win over Japan’s Yushi Tanaka in the final. The week had tested him far more severely, with Sen spending 85 minutes in a demanding semifinal and also overcoming Chinese Taipei’s Chou Tien Chen earlier in the tournament.

He celebrated by shutting out the noise, eyes closed and fingers in his ears, signalling a rare moment of relief in an uneven season. But the inability to sustain momentum across consecutive tournaments punctuated the calendar. In a circuit designed to reward consistency through cumulative ranking points and qualification thresholds, sporadic excellence proved insufficient.

Former World No. 1 and World championship silver medallist, K. Srikanth’s year, following a familiar pattern in men’s singles, was marked by a single peak amid frequent early exits. The 32-year-old’s run to the final of the Malaysia Masters briefly revived memories of why he is regarded among the sport’s most gifted shot-makers. For a week in Kuala Lumpur, he dictated rallies through placement and variation, and the India-China final on that Sunday served as a reminder of his 2017 peak.

That week aside, the broader picture aligned with what unfolded across the discipline, with both experienced internationals Srikanth and H.S. Prannoy struggling to sustain intensity across consecutive tournaments, marked by repeated round-of-16 losses and early exits. Srikanth’s resurgence in Kuala Lumpur showed that the skill remains intact, but its isolation only reinforced the larger problem: Indian badminton continues to rely on episodic returns from seasoned players rather than the steady emergence of a younger cohort capable of carrying tournaments week after week.

Beyond Sen, younger men’s singles players showed flashes, an upset here, a quarterfinal there but none imposed themselves often enough to alter India’s competitive standing.

While India has five men’s singles players inside the world’s top 50, those expected to take the baton, including Kiran George (25), Priyanshu Rajawat (23) and M. Tharun (23), have struggled to put together consistent runs. However, the 20-year-old Ayush Shetty has emerged as the most promising long-term prospect, though his impact at the highest level is still taking shape.

“It is going to take another couple of years. We have Lakshya, who is still young, and the way he’s going, I think he’s going to be there for a fair bit. Ayush is coming up, Tharun was the next in line, Kiran George is anyway there. But there is inconsistency in them. Priyanshu came and then got injured, but his best is yet to come, probably next year. Others have to mature,” P. Kashyap, former India star and now a coach, had told The Hindu.

The post-Sindhu question

P.V. Sindhu’s struggles through the season were marked by recurring patterns that became hard to ignore. As the significant share of her defeats came not from being outplayed early, but from an inability to close out games.

At the Sudirman Cup, she led Line Kjaersfeldt 20-16 in the opening game and 19-12 in the second, yet lost both. Similar collapses surfaced across the tour against Thuy Linh Nguyen at the Indonesia Masters, where she surrendered a 20-14 lead, similarly against Tujung at the India Open and Yeo Jia Min at China Masters after being comfortably ahead. Despite holding leads or being level late in games, Sindhu repeatedly conceded runs of points at decisive moments.

At 29, retirement is not imminent for a player with two Olympic and five World Championship medals, but the absence of clarity around a post-Sindhu era has become increasingly evident. For nearly a decade following the Saina Nehwal era, Sindhu’s presence provided insulation against systemic weaknesses.

Giving it her all: Sindhu pushed hard but wasn’t rewarded too much.
| Photo Credit:
FILE PHOTO: GIRI KVS

The most notable moment of promise came when Unnati Hooda defeated Sindhu at the China Open, a result that drew attention not merely because of the upset, but because she became the only Indian woman in the last five years to beat Sindhu. The 17-year-old won a three-game (21-16, 19-21, 21-13) contest by absorbing Sindhu’s attack and forcing longer exchanges, relying on defensive solidity, patience and precise placement to force errors late in games. Hooda claimed the opening game, conceded the second narrowly, and pulled clear decisively in the decider.

Another glimpse of promise came through Tanvi Sharma, whose upset of former world champion Nozomi Okuhara at the Syed Modi International Super 300 briefly shifted attention to the next rung of talent. The 16-year-old recovered from a one-sided opening game to win a three-game contest, showing composure well beyond her years by matching the Olympic medallist’s shot for shot as the match wore on. The game ended with the Japanese player missing a drop shot at the left corner of the court, the final error from Okuhara met with a brief smile that seemed to acknowledge the resistance. The victory, which followed Tanvi’s silver medal at the World junior championships earlier in the year and her run to the US Open final, underlined her ability to reset mid-match and handle sustained pressure.

Beyond those isolated breakthroughs, India’s women’s singles landscape remains crowded with promise but short on readiness. Anmol Kharb, still only 17, has emerged as one of the more assured prospects, with a measured game and has already delivered domestic success. Malvika Bansod, the 23-year-old has defeated Olympic medal winners twice in her career, Surya Charishma Tamiri (19), the new women’s singles national champion, Anupama Upadhyaya (20), and Isharani Baruah (21) have hovered around the fringes of consistency, each offering distinct strengths but also clear limitations whether in recovering from injury, finishing power, defensive compactness or physical intensity.

In women’s doubles, Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand’s season also highlighted the tactical ceiling they are still working to breach. Their Super 300 title at the Syed Modi International came through control rather than overwhelming attack, as the pair has increasingly prioritised stability- rally length, pace control and positioning as a foundation for aggression. Against higher-ranked, Japanese, Korean and Chinese pairs, however, the margins became clearer.

India’s women landscape remains rich in potential, but potential alone has not translated into regular late-round appearances at the sport’s highest level.

While the mixed doubles showed a rare breakthrough, with Tanisha Crasto and Dhruv Kapila reaching the World championships quarterfinals after upsetting a top-five pair, India’s first last-eight appearance in the discipline since Satwik and Ashwini Ponnappa in 2018.

The depth deficit

The contrast with the sport’s leading nations such as China, Japan, Indonesia and Denmark routinely placed two or three players into the business end of major tournaments. Even when one faltered, another advanced. India, by contrast, often found its campaign resting on one or two names and when those names stumbled early, the week effectively ended. This gap was most visible at the Grade 1 tournaments, where the depth of opposition magnified inconsistencies.

SatChi exemplified this paradox. Their ability to remain competitive without winning titles kept India visible. That a title-less season from one pair still stands out as the year’s most consistent achievement is both a witness to their resilience and an indictment of the broader ecosystem.

“There was no centralised programme or even a plan to provide systemic training for the juniors earlier. We had two centres — in Bengaluru and Hyderabad — and only the top senior players would be training there, barring an occasional youngster who either had the means or was exceptional. With the NCoE in Guwahati, that has changed. It will take some time, but in the next three years, I am convinced we will see an entire generation of players dominating Indian and world badminton just like the previous one,” Badminton Association of India general secretary Sanjay Mishra had told The Hindu.

For now, Satwik and Chirag have ensured that India has not disappeared from the elite conversation. But a sport of this scale cannot afford to rely on a single partnership to carry that burden. Until a broader base of players begins to regularly populate the latter stages of top-tier tournaments, Indian badminton’s global standing will remain precarious — present, but peripheral.