Regardless how the tournament goes, HS Prannoy will be in an exclusive little club simply by competing in the BWF World Tour FInals that gets underway in Bangkok on Wednesday. Just making the eight-player competition is an achievement. Entrants are picked on the basis of points they’ve earned over the course of the BWF World tour and the 30-year-old from India has earned the right to make his debut at the year ender.
This has been a good year for Prannoy. His 31-15 record this season is his best since he started his international career in 2011. He has picked up wins against World champions Loh Kuan Yew and Kento Momota, world medallist Lakshya Sen and Olympic medallist Anthony Ginting.
Prannoy has also finally ticked a major life goal as well, collecting the Arjuna Award last week. He’s decided the brass statuette will be put up in the living room wall at his parents home in Thrissur, Kerala. Surrounding it will be the Thomas Cup gold medal from this year, the Commonwealth Games gold from 2018 and the Youth Olympics silver he won in 2010.
“It’s such a huge achievement for me. You feel really great because the recognition you get as a sportsperson is the hard work of your entire life which comes in the picture,” he says.
As far as honours go, the Arjuna Award might not be the pinnacle of sporting achievement. Prannoy received his after all, alongside 24 other athletes. But for the 28-year-old, it’s more of a reassurance that he belongs at this level.
As he slipped into the maroon blazer that would identify him as an awardee for the function, Prannoy couldn’t help but go back to 2008 when he was at a crossroads of a fledgling career.
“I remember 15-16 years back, I was having a discussion with my parents whether I should continue playing badminton or focus on my studies. It was a point where there wasn’t any certainty on which option I should pick. To come from there to now when you are getting an Arjuna Award.... that was special,” he says.
It was an emotional moment for Prannoy’s parents who accompanied him to the ceremony in Delhi.
“They wouldn’t have thought I was going to get it when they backed me. When we had that discussion when I had completed my 10th standard, there was this doubt because I was good in studies. There was a lot of expenditure involved and my family wasn’t financially sound at that moment. The question on their mind was whether there was any career in badminton. At that time, the only thing I could say was to give me two years. That was the pact I made with them. That’s how I went to Hyderabad. But at the start, I’m pretty sure my parents wouldn’t have expected I’d be in Delhi getting the Arjuna Award,” he says.
To be honest, neither would Prannoy, until very recently. For many years, the World number 12 badminton player would dutifully fill out his application form for the national sports awards, only for the proposal to die at the hands of either the badminton national federation or the selection committee.
In 2019, when his name was rejected once more after a year in which he had won gold at the CWG, bronze at the Asian Championships and reached a career high WR 8, an upset Prannoy had lashed out on social media about.
HS Prannoy after the Indian team lifted the Thomas Cup trophy | Photo Credit: Badmintonphoto
”If you ever want your name in the Awards list , make sure you have people who will get your name to the list. Performance is least considered in our country. Sad state of our county but can’t help it. Let go and just play until you can,” an angry Prannoy tweeted.
Now that enough time has passed, Prannoy admits he took the rejection hard. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been so public in my criticism. Sometimes you don’t think twice before you do a lot of things. But it was one phase of my career and that phase was tough,” he admits.
The day after tweeting that out, a very nervous Prannoy was becked over for a chat by Pullela Gopichand. “I spoke to Gopi sir. I was a little scared honestly. He knows I am a little outspoken. I don’t keep it in my mind. But he didn’t get angry That’s given some bad results but he knows how I am as a player. He understands me,” he says. This time around, when Prannoy finally got the award, it was an ‘I told you so’ moment. “
“He said I knew this will come some day. I am glad it came now. You have been putting in effort and people are going to recognise it eventually,” says the 28-year-old.
Truth be told, Prannoy’s recognition has come later than most of his compatriots and even some of his juniors – on what is his 12 th year in professional badminton. His compatriots Kidambi Srikanth got his Arjuna award in 2015, B Sai Praneeth got his in 2019, and doubles players Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy got theirs in 2020 when they were 23 and 21 years old. This year too, Prannoy shares his award with 21-year-old Lakshya Sen.
“It’s strange to say but it was a little awkward for me since I train and compete (at Gopichand Academy) with a lot of these guys. You don’t want to be left out. And each year it felt like it wasn’t going to happen,” he says.
The perception back then was that while Prannoy was clearly a talented player, he was always going to be a step behind the very elite. | Photo Credit: AP
He admits having self doubts over the reasons he was missing out. The ‘giantkiller’ tag he’d picked up began to rankle. The reputation was not underserved considering even prior to this year he’d racked up wins against Olympic champions Lin Dan, Chen Long, Taufik Hidayat, Lee Chong Wei and Viktor Axelsen. But the implication of that reputation was that he was never a ‘giant’ in his own right.
Take the 2017 Indonesia Open for example. Prannoy beat Lee Chong Wei and Chen Long in successive matches before going down to fellow Indian Srikanth in the quarterfinals. While Prannoy got the big name notches on his belt, Srikanth would go on to win the title - a kick that started a tremendous run of form that saw him reach the world number 1 ranking a year later.
“It got to me a little bit at that time that I think I haven’t won anything as big in the last 12 years of my career. When you look title wise, I haven’t won anything big and that gets to you in some form,” Prannoy says.
The perception back then was that while he was clearly a talented player, he was always going to be a step behind the very elite.
“Initially I had issues. You started feeling what is being written is true. But it was just a matter of time. Some players have that ability. They show up in the international level and they just fit right in. They have that kind of skill. (Kidambi) Srikanth is one of them. His skill level is so high that he can beat a lot of players without getting into trouble. Lakshya (Sen) is another. That’s just their game style,” he says.
Prannoy on the other hand has to bank on his persistence.
“If you don’t have that kind of game, you have to work really hard, tire players out and then get the win. My game is something where I have to work hard. I can’t beat someone just on skill. I’ll have to grind out matches. I’ll have to make you run for an hour before beating you. It isn’t that one style of playing is right or wrong. There are some players who adapt quickly to the level you have to play at at the elite level because that’s their skill level. For others it just takes longer,” he says.
According to Prannoy, what’s been key to his success is the fact that he kept grinding even when it seemed that results weren’t always coming. Prannoy has made his peace somewhat with that ‘giant killing’ tag. He still beats the best in the world – as his wins against Loh Kean Yew, Sen and Ginting this year suggest. But he knows that just a single win against a higher ranked player is no guarantee of success. He has played seven quarterfinals and two semifinals but just one final on the world tour this season – a stat he’s looking to improve on.
“The top 30 in the men’s singles is tough and you have to accept it. It’s not like any other sport. We are playing day in and day out with the top 30. I think with the exception of Axelsen who goes in as a favourite in matches and who is fairly consistent, the rest of the guys in the top 30 are fairly even in terms of ability. So if I beat a top name like Momota at the world championships and then lose to a Zhao Zhunpeng in the quarterfinal, it isn’t that I lost to a bad player. He’s himself reached the quarters by beating Srikanth and Lee Ji Zia,” he says.
With the men’s singles field being as competitive as it is, Prannoy says what matters as much as moments of technical brilliance is the ability to simply be as consistent as possible. “Everyone is so close to each other that matches are physically demanding. You need to be at your peak in terms of strength and endurance,” he says.
And while the results have started showing more this season, Prannoy says he’s been working on his consistency for a couple of years now. “Honestly I wasn’t very consistent with my training in the past. I’d work really hard for 3-4 weeks and take a break because I wasn’t very good at it. I wasn’t consistent in the number of days I would push myself or in my diet and training. Because of that I had many seasons where I would only play a few tournaments before getting some injury. Because of that I wasn’t able to build any momentum,” he says.
“I’m still trying to be consistent. There still a lot more scope. The guys who are 1-2 are extremely consistent and to beat them, you have to be even more consistent. The major deciding factor at the world level now is consistency. It’s about how consistent you can be not just in terms of your play on the court but also in your preparation,” he says.
Over the past couple of years, Prannoy has made changes in almost every aspect of his training. In 2019 he first experimented with a gluten free diet and restricted his intake of mushrooms, meat, milk and eggs. More recently he is rigorously tracking what goes into his preparation. “Everything from my food to my training and my sleep is being tracked by my team. In that way I know how many days I’ve been consistent,” he says. As a result Prannoy has largely been able to stay injury free and increased the number of days he’s been able to spend on court.
Regardless of how the BWF World Tour Finals go, Prannoy feels he is in a good space. | Photo Credit: HANDOUT
“That (staying injury free)is a little luck but a lot of planning. My team (he works with Go Sports) has been monitoring my load management. When I’m training in Hyderabad, load management has been getting better. When fatigue comes in, I’m not training on top of that. I’m focussing a lot more on recovery. In the past, there was no load management. There were a lot of weeks were training would accumulate and I’d pick up a niggle because I wasn’t recovering from the session. What’s been key this season is that I’ve been able to understand my body and the amount of load it’s going through. Because of that, I have been able to play on court a lot more,” he says.
As his final tournament of the year gets underway in Bangkok, Prannoy believes he has given himself his best possible chance of doing well. Regardless of how the tournament goes though he feels he is in a good space. “When I compare myself to where I was a few years back, I know I’ve worked really hard and consistently to be here where I’m still competing with the best. I feel I am finally doing some justice to myself. But I think it’s just a message to all youngsters. Success comes early for some and for others it happens a little late. But if you are working whole heartedly things will fall in place at some point or the other,” he says.
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