Know Your Sports Star | Saina Nehwal | India At Olympics

Know Your Sports Star | Saina Nehwal | India At Olympics

Hello, Namaste, Adab!! My name is Rajneekant and today I am going to talk about badminton sensation of India!! - Saina Nehwal!!

Of-course you may have heard about her, seen her in news and advertisements frequently. She has won many international titles in badminton so far and has been credited for games' popularity in India.

Saina was born to Harvir Singhji and Ushaji in Hisar of Haryana, both of them were badminton players representing Haryana. Harvir Singh ji was scientist in Agriculture University in Hisar and moved to Hyderabad in 1998. When her father Harvir Singhji met PSS Nani Prasad Rao, badminton coach from Andhra Pradesh spotted Saina's talent and convinced him to let Saina pursue her career in Badminton and asked her to join classes. Whole family had to travel 20 kms every day to stadium for Saina's training. Ultimately Singh sahab, shifted little closer to the stadium to avoid travel issues. 

Saina was talented, hard working and her father made sure she gets the training from best coaches of badminton in India. She was trained under SM Arif and then with National Badminton Coach Pullela Gopichand. Arif Sahab, as he was fondly known was a Dronacharya Award winner.

But then everybody starts somewhere to reach the peak in their career. We are familiar with stories of how today's megastars struggled in their early days, then came the turning point in their career and then how they tasted success in their life.

Saina's story is exactly opposite of this.

Saina announced her arrival on world stage with loudest noise possible. At the age of 16, She became Under-19 national champion and first one in history to win Asian Satellite Badminton Championship twice. In the same year of 2006, she participated in 4-star tournament Philippine Open as 85th seeded player and went on crushing all established players including world no 4 to win the championship. It was the most soothing shock for Indians and rude one to the world. Later in that year, Saina won BWF World Jr Championship to mark entry of India on world stage.

In 2008 Beijing Olympics, Saina became first Indian Badminton player to reach quarter finals but lost nail-biting 3-game triller by 28-26, 14-21, 15-21. Same year Saina won Yonex Taipei Open among others and was named "Most promising player of the year"!!

By now Saina had established herself in Badminton world but since Beijing Olympics, she was searching for a win in big super series titles. Then came the Indonesia Super Series championship.  Saina was playing against the Chinese player in finals and had lost 1st game with badly with 12-21 points, but then she made come back in next 2 games, winning the title for herself and India. With this win She had placed herself in league of Prakash Padukone and Pullela Gopichand, both of them having won England championship of same stature. In case if you don't know, Prakash Padukone is father of beloved Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone.

Biggest stage was set for Indian Players in Commonwealth Games in Delhi in 2010. Saina was one of eight brand ambassadors of the Games! And why not, she was most recognized face of Indian Badminton in world by now. India had lot of hopes from her best players, as they were going to perform in front of home crowd. Imagine 20 year old girl standing next to thousands of people, everyone among them looking at her with hope in their eyes, every news channel reporting even the smallest news from the arena, what a tremendous pressure that would put player in. Saina had reached finals of women's badminton. She started first game aggressively but had lost it by 19-21, with that loss Saina and crowd both went into silence and shock, looking at narrow chances of winning the match but the fighter she was! did the impossible winning next 2 games by 23-21, 21-13 and becoming first Indian badminton woman player to win - Gold in Commonwealth Games. Saina mentioned after win "when I was a match-point down, it was like a shock. It was a big match and winning it means a lot to me. Even many years from now, those present here will always remember how Saina won the gold. It is a proud feeling" Of-course it was proud feeling for us Indians as well!!  Since then Saina has won many international competitions including Bronze medal for India in 2012 London Olympics. She reached world no 1 ranking in 2015, her highest.

Saina has been awarded with Arjuna Award, Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award and 3rd highest civilian award Padma Bhushan of India.

Saina is role model for all Indians today, she has written autobiography named 'Playing To win' to inspire younger generations to take up sports as carrier.

I wish her all the best for her career and upcoming tournaments and yes, if you want to get the glimpse of her life, you can follow her on Twitter.

I will come back again next week with story about another Indian Sports star, so do like, share and subscribe to this Blog.

Thank you for reading!!