Former national badminton champion Chetan Anand pleased with his trainees' performance

Four-time national badminton champion, B. Chetan Anand, is pleased with the way his trainees have performed in the last three major events - India Open, Syed Modi Open and the Odisha Open.

Former national champion turned coach Chetan Anand with Smit Toshniwal, who reached the women's singles final in the just-concluded Odisha Open badminton championship.

Four-time national badminton champion, B. Chetan Anand, is pleased with the way his trainees have performed in the last three major events - India Open, Syed Modi Open and the Odisha Open.

“I am glad that the players have been slowly making an impact. There are still some little things to work on, but one thing for sure is that they have the talent to make it big,” Chetan said in a chat with  ‘Sportstar’  on Monday, a day after Smit Toshniwal made it to the final of Odisha Open.

“Yes, Smit has been brilliant. She has joined our Academy (Chetan Anand Badminton Academy) only two months before, and we have been working on various aspects of her game,” said Chetan, who had a career-best ranking of World No. 10.

“She has the movements on the court, good net game but was lacking confidence and taking too much pressure. Since I was there at the Odisha Open, I told her to stay relaxed and just go out and enjoy the game,” the 41-year-old three-time SAF Games gold medallist said.

 

“In fact, Smit had a high fever before the event and couldn’t even practice. Definitely, she has the game to look far beyond,” said Chetan, who heads the coaching staff at CABA along with his wife and former international Sarada Govardhini.

“Honestly, all the efforts over the last three years since we started the CABA are bearing fruit. What is important is that even during the pandemic when everything was shut down, we put most of the trainees at the Academy itself to ensure continuous training. I think that helped them,” he said.

“I feel that most of these young, gifted shuttlers are losing focus in the middle of the matches. We will work on that too,” Chetan said.

For the record, in the Syed Modi Open, earlier this month, G. Srivedya and T. Hema Nagendra Babu made it to the mixed doubles final and Srivedya, and Ishika Jaiswal lost in the semifinals in a close three-setter match in women’s doubles in Odisha Open.

For someone who was an artist with the racket during his heyday, Chetan could not be faulted for dreaming big.

“Yes, the ultimate target is to produce an Olympics medallist from our Academy (CABA). I know that it is still a long way to go, but these results have certainly infused a lot of confidence in the support staff too for there is a group of players who can make it big at the highest level,” he concluded.