Pullela Gopichand: Mizoram has potential to produce future batch of badminton stars

Badminton has witnessed an unprecedented rise in India with stars like PV Sindhu, Saina Nehwal, Parupalli Kashyap, N Sikki Reddy among many others leaving their massive impact to the world of shuttle and racquet. And much credit for the rise and success of badminton stars in India has to go to Padma Bhushan awardee Pullela Gopichand.

While the Gopichand Badminton Academy in Hyderabad has done wonders for the rising and established stars in the world of badminton, the state-of-art academy continues its partnership with Tata Trusts’ badminton programme in the state of Mizoram as they look tounearth and polishnew talent while also giving a platform for better players to continue taking giant strides to improve their game.

“When I first went to Mizoram, my thinking was that it won’t have passion for badminton. But what I saw there made me so happy because every community had a center with a badminton court. Players used to gather in evening to play and that bonding and passion which I saw within the players made me happy. There are around 840 players playing badminton regularly in grassroot community centers and after witnessing their talents, I am sure there will be many players from Mizoram who will go on to make it big,” Pullela Gopichand told WION in an exclusive interaction.

Sporting action came to a halt globally due to COVID-19 pandemic that forced many camps to shut down. As playing fields remained empty for months, awareness around the importance of fitness and immunity for health despite the social distancing, has only increased. The impact on children and young adults is especially greater as sports and gaming activities provide opportunities to engage and socialize and help with overall development of an individual in society. In order to stay connected and for aspirational athletes to continue their training, it is important to look at alternate methods during this forced break because of the pandemic.

“We were looking at video to connect to coaches and players but we weren’t sure when we would be able to go ahead with it. In this time of pandemic, that process was fastracked in this time and we were able to connect with coaches and players while monitoring the development and doing necessary changes in real time,” Gopichand said on the role of technology in this programme.

The Tata Trusts’ badminton programme on-going across 25 grassroots centres and covers all 8 districts of Mizoram state, is now providing students with online training to keep them engaged and in touch with the sport. In order to keep children in Mizoram excited about the sport, Tata Trusts has partnered with the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy. Gopichand and his team conduct one session every week, along with the coaches from the programme and an exercise and conditioning specialist conducting the remaining sessions. “

Tata Trusts were already working in Mizoram for different things and that’s when the Mizoram government approached us to do something on badminton. We don’t have any technical knowledge about badminton so to design a programme we got in touch with Pullela Gopichand. We invited him to see the talent in Mizoram and after witnessing it, he came on board as a technical partner. Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy is our technical partner. We designed the entire programme as to how to approach minute of details for this and Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy is taking care of skill training of not only players but giving tips to our coaches as well,” Neelam Babardesai - Head, Tata Trusts Sports Initiative told WION.

Currently the initiative is split into two: grassroots development and high performance. The selection of kids for the grassroots centers is simply based on interest and keenness towards learning the sport. The selection process for the high performance programme (Regional Development Centers) is strictly based on talent and performance. Prospective candidates' performance in State/district tournaments is taken into consideration and also their rankings as per the Mizoram Badminton Association. As of 2019-20, the initiative has had 1862 beneficiaries who are between 8 and 15 years.

“The grassroot plan is mainly focused on the basics of the game, like holding a racquet to players’ movement on the court. Whereas the high-performance plan is for bit polished players and we help them with their strength training and more advanced details of the sport,” Ponty Lalramtluangi, Coach at Regional Development Centers under Badminton Initiative Mizoram(BIM) told WION.

“For the competitive layer, players come down to our community centers for trials which are also attended by coaches from Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy and that is how the selection is made. For grassroot layer, it is more about looking at the keenness of a youngster and how passionate he or she is about the sport. We are already overloaded in the grassroot part of our training, which also shows the passion Mizoram as a state has for badminton,” Ponty added.

The infrastructure and facilities currently under use are multipurpose indoor community halls which also double up as Badminton courts. The programme is run in 40 such functional centers as of now. Tata Trusts has planned to construct a “Center of Excellence” close to the state capital for which the Mizoram Government has provided us with 10 acres (approx.) of land on lease for 50 years.

The Siphir community has given the land for the construction of the Centre of Excellence, free of cost, and the Mizoram Government will be preparing the site and developing the basic facilities for the same. Financial and operational independence is also an important goal for the programme, with the objective being to make the initiative self-sustaining through funds collected as fees from trainees and from resources generated by the training centre.

The mental strength of a player in any sport plays a massive role and the partnership between the Tata Trusts and Gopichand Badminton Academy is focusing to tick every box that is needed for a modern-day player to continue their development, on and off the court.

“We always wanted to focus on mental aspect of the game. Tata Trusts’ have always focused on the mental aspect of the game but moreover, with the kind of infrastructure we have in place and are looking to produce, I am sure we will give the players everything they need to improve. Be it improvement in mental strength, nutrition, game-plan or any other thing. And I am sure, we will be able to live up to the expectations we have with his programme,” Gopichand said.

“We are looking at the holistic development of children and not just development for the sake of it. There will be many players who will not make the cut to the national or international level but as we know, sport can help a person develop life skills as well, and that is what we are focusing on to providing lifetime skills,” Neelam concluded.