Fitness level, not tourneys, can make or mar Saina

Saina Nehwal needs to take a break right now. In the last few interviews to the national and international media, Saina has been speaking about her desire to become the world number one by the end of this year. [caption id=“attachment_20999” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Tell-tale signs? Liu Jin/AFP “]  [/caption] There is no doubt that the 21-year-old has the potential to reach the top spot in the world, but Saina should know that setting a time period will unnecessarily put more pressure on her and she will look to play more and more tournaments to achieve that goal. Saina hinted at the same during an interaction with the official website of the Badminton World Federation last month when she said, “There are a lot of tournaments this year and I believe I have what it takes to take on the other top players, especially those from China.” Chinese stars Shixian Wang, Xin Wang and Yihan Wang are currently ranked above the world number four. However, the plan to play many tournaments this year to achieve the goal is fraught with danger. Saina has already started to implement the plan by entering three back-to-back tournaments starting with the Thailand Open Grand Prix Gold this week, followed by the Singapore and Indonesia Super Series where she is the defending champion. Saina had also played three back-to-back tournaments last year with the India Open replacing the Thailand Open then. But there were two major differences. Before beginning her three-week sojourn in 2010, the Indian ace had put in about six weeks of training while she has not even got two weeks under her belt after the Sudirman Cup mixed team championship last month. It is no secret that Saina’s success is directly proportionate to her fitness and the amount of training hours she puts in before any major tournament. And playing too many tournaments has proved detrimental in the past as well. Saina had taken the same route to improve her ranking in 2009, playing as many as 17 tournaments that year and failed to reach the business end of any event in the second half of 2009. Those performances had forced her to take stock of her scheduling and the decision to play fewer tournaments had been a major contributing factor to her rise last year. In 2010, Saina played just 10 ranking tournaments — the maximum that are considered to determine the world ranking— and the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games and returned home with three Super Series titles and a Commonwealth Games gold. The dream run also propelled her to the second spot in the world ranking for a brief period and gave her the confidence that she can take the pole position in future. But targeting this year-end for achieving that goal is not the right way forward. There is a gap of about 18,000 points between Saina and world number one Shixian and the Indian ace will be defending maximum points in three Super Series from now on. Also unlike the last India Open GP gold tournament, which kickstarted Saina’s rise, no GP gold or even Grand Prix level tournament is likely to have an easy field, considering that this is an Olympic qualification period and every player will want to enhance her chances of making it to the quadrennial event. Even the Chinese will bombard all these tournaments with their talented youngsters to tire out their major threats for the 2012 London Games and have as many players in the top-eight to ensure that they have the choice of fielding any three players they want. Also Saina has herself admitted that she is not at the peak of her fitness when she explained the reason for her loss to rising Thai star Ratchanok Inthanon in the second league match of the Sudirman Cup. Speaking about the loss, Saina had said that she had not recovered well after a tight match the day before. This was just her second match of the tournament and she would know that it takes five matches to win a tournament. For years, chief national coach P Gopi Chand had been championing of the cause of playing fewer tournaments for better results and had proved that he was right when his approach gave the desired results in Saina’s case. I am not sure what stand Gopi Chand would have taken had Saina been working with him in the last few months, though my gut feeling says that he would have not allowed her to play in Thailand. Thankfully, both of them have decided to put aside their egos and work towards the common goal of winning an Olympic medal for India. And if Saina could fulfil that dream of an Olympic gold, it would be definitely far bigger than the world number one tag.