India’s chief badminton coach Pullela Gopichand says a lot of work needs to be done in doubles event and stressed on the importance of a tougher system in place. He rued that Indian coaches don’t have the necessary freedom to groom doubles specialists in the country. “A lot of work needs to be done in the doubles front. In our country, the coach doesn’t have the freedom like foreign coaches, in terms of forming different combinations,” Gopichand said.
“When it comes to doubles, it requires a lot of grooming. So we need tougher laws, so that once a player is selected for doubles, he or she can only play doubles and similarly for singles, that sort of authority we don’t have in India,” he added.
The 2001 All England champion expressed satisfaction over the women team’s performance in Uber Cup and said Saina
Nehwal, P V Sindhu, Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponappa were the big major positives of the tournament. “Saina and Sindhu have been fantastic; Jwala and Ashwini too have played very well. We had our chances in the doubles and the match (against Japan) could have gone anyway, but once we lost the doubles I didn’t think we had enough depth in our
team to pull it off. Overall from team point of view, it is good,” Gopichand said.
“We have to understand that for youngsters coming into the Thomas and Uber Cup for the first time and playing well is
very tough. So beating Indonesia and Thailand was some fantastic results,” he said. Asked about Saina and Sindhu’s next schedule, Gopichand said: “This tournament must have been very draining for the players so I think Saina and Sindhu will be playing Indonesia and Australia.” PTI