Not too long ago, Indian badminton could be summed up in three words: Saina vs China.
Today, it's almost like that definition never existed.
Since August 19, 2016, when PV Sindhu's Olympic final against then World No. 1 Carolina Marin generated 17.3 million impressions across five television channels, Indian players have won four Superseries titles in six months and two medals at the World Championships this year. The current world rankings have five Indians in the top 20.
It's a run of form that, on the one hand, would have seemed improbable at the turn of the millennium, yet at the same time is not a flash in the pan but the start of something special. And the success has come about not by accident but through long years of planning and execution. In short, a system at work.
The two main figures behind this rise are Pullela Gopichand and Saina Nehwal. "None of what we have today would have been possible without both of them," nine-time national champion Aparna Popat told ESPN.
"For players of this generation, including myself, watching Saina play made us believe that we too can dream, we too can win," says World No 15 HS Prannoy. "She kick-started this revolution in the sport and together with Gopi sir made the path for all of us so much smoother."
Saina's influence can't be overstated. The breakthrough came at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, when, aged 18, she stretched Indonesia's Maria Kristin Yulianti to three games and became the first Indian badminton player ever to reach an Olympic quarterfinal. The following year she would become the first Indian to win a Superseries title in Indonesia. She returned to the Olympics four years later, in 2012, to bring back a bronze.
After her, the deluge.
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"In our time making the top-20 was a huge deal," says Aparna, who retired from professional sport in 2006. "Primarily because we lagged behind the top countries on most fronts, barring talent."
The scenario then was starkly different. Top Indian players traveling for international tournaments stayed in dormitories, ate at cheap roadside stalls and slept through hunger pangs. With very little money on them, and with foreign exchange not as easily available as it is today, three meals a day in a foreign country was a stretch.
Also, unlike today, when Indian players can tailor their own calendar according to their form or when they wish to peak, players couldn't pick international tournaments about a decade and a half ago. There were eight designated circuits in a year pre-approved for funding by the government and you had to fare well in the national championships to be able to participate. This, even without factoring whether rankings allowed players a spot in the main draw or the qualifying stage.
None of the processes or practices that exist today came about overnight. Some were, in fact, set in motion as early as two and a half decades ago -- such as the shuttles used at national championships. Prakash Padukone's defeat to Rajeev Bagga at the national championships in the 1990s was to act as the springboard for that change. Having trained in Denmark, Padukone was not used to playing with the Indian shuttle, whose flight and trajectory varied vastly from that of international ones; after his defeat he said indigenous shuttles would only hamper players' prospects at the world stage. His words carried weight and international shuttles were then introduced at senior and junior national events.
The move towards video analysis began in the last few years of her career, Aparna says. Almost all leading nations in the sport were already streets ahead on it by then. "So I bought a handycam, packed it in my bag, carried it for tournaments and gave it a shot," she says. Just ahead of her matches, she would set up the camera on the tripod near the court, grab her racket and dart off to play.
"Halfway through the second game, I would realize that the camera was probably facing the wrong court (since in most of the smaller tournaments you couldn't be certain which court you would be allotted until the last minute), or at the back of my mind I would be wondering whether the battery had died or the camera had been stolen. Even after all this, if I managed to get my game alright on it, the next question was: who will break this down? Who will tell me where I was going wrong?," she adds. "Today, it's a lot easier. You don't have to worry about carrying a camera around, recording your games or trying to wrap your head around what to do with it next. Now it's just about who uses what they have better."
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The big shift came about with Gopichand taking over as chief national coach in 2006; two years later, he mortgaged his house to set up an academy in Hyderabad. Until then, top players were scattered across the country, working with what they could afford to, without a uniform plan bringing them together. "Bringing all players under one roof, organising national camps and exposure trips made a huge difference," says former World No. 6 Parupalli Kashyap, who along with Saina was one of the earliest trainees at Gopichand's academy. "Many senior players resisted the rules and systems Gopi put in place for training but he stood his ground and believed that he was doing the right thing. Without him, everything would have fallen apart."
Aparna agrees. "A lot of things came together for the sport over the past few years - funding, exposure, camps, hosting Superseries events, getting a league of our own, along with government and federation support - all of which fashioned a gradual but remarkable turnaround."
This year's successes have an additional spark: Gopichand's decision, at the start of the year, to bring in Indonesian coach Mulyo Handoyo to provide sharp, focused mentoring for the top national singles players. Apart from one all-Indian Superseries final and a World Championships silver to show for tangible gains, the battery of men's singles players - led by Kidambi Srikanth - have grown more menacing than ever.
"Earlier too we brought in foreign coaches but we failed to find returns because the usual practice has been of the national coach dictating terms," says former national chief coach SM Arif, "In this case, Gopichand has shown faith in Handoyo and allowed him a free hand to run his sessions and even change whatever he thought was not working well enough."
Indian players are no longer expected to just show up at tournaments. They're expected to win. There are no more 'how did we manage to pull that off' in gushed tones, it's now about 'when are we getting the next title home'. "The threat of Indian players is very real now. If we look at China, they haven't made a World Championships or an Olympic final in three years now. We also have a very promising batch of juniors who will lead the next wave and as a powerhouse in the sport we only stand to grow stronger," says Kashyap.
Aparna, though, has a statutory word of caution: "The pool of talented players is getting larger and we need more organised systems. This is a crucial time and we can't afford to roll backwards. We should move quickly now and keep up the momentum."