Lauding the six Premier Badminton League (PBL) teams for having competent doubles players, ace Indian women’s shuttler Ashwini Ponnappa today predicted an exciting battle in the second edition of the badminton league.
“This year’s PBL will witness very competitive, strong and exciting doubles matches because all the six teams are having competent doubles players,” Ponappa told reporters at the launch of Bengaluru Top Guns, led by Kidambi Srikanth here.
Ashwini said European and Asian players are good at doubles because their countries treat them on par with singles’ shuttlers.
“There are many good doubles players from Europe and Asia, because these countries treat their doubles players on par with the singles players. Their focus is more on doubles event than on singles, and a lot of training goes into it,” she said.
Ashwini also opined that the participation of world class doubles players in PBL can change the Indian mindset of focusing more on singles event.
The Indian shuttler said that she has learnt a lot from her mixed-doubles partner Dane Joachim Fisher Nielsen when they played for Pune in the last edition of the Indian Badminton League.
“I learnt a lot from Fisher, who comes from a country where it boasts of four top doubles players in doubles and mixed doubles categories. I have learnt a lot when I partnered him in last IBL. He is somebody who is willing to share and help other players,” she said.
Even national Chief Coach Pullela Gopichand said, “Some of the best matches we will see, irrespective of which team plays which, I think mixed doubles will be really delightful to watch. Each one is star, and in all of these teams we have top players who played in the top ten consistently or Olympic medalists who are part of this event,” he said.
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