By Bhavya Narayan
Indian badminton continues to live in the space between exhilarating breakthroughs and sobering setbacks — and Paris offered the latest snapshot.
At the 2025 BWF World Championships, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty banked a second Worlds medal with bronze in men’s doubles. PV Sindhu rolled back the years to upset the World No. 2, only to fall a round later. HS Prannoy dragged a top seed to the brink in a thriller and still went home early. Lakshya Sen, a Paris 2024 Olympic semi-finalist, ran into the sport’s form player on day one and could not punch through. Mixed doubles flirted with a first-ever Worlds medal, and women’s doubles were ravaged by withdrawals and early exits. It was all there — the highs and lows that have defined India’s season.
Men’s singles: Prannoy’s heart and Lakshya’s hard lessons
If there is a single athlete who embodies Indian badminton’s grit, it is HS Prannoy. In Paris he reeled in World No. 2 Anders Antonsen from a game down, carved out three match points, and still lost 8-21, 21-17, 21-23 in a match that swung on inches. At 33, he was candid: his body no longer bounces back the way it used to, and he is likely to choose his shots carefully from here. It was a defeat that felt like a victory until the final rally — glorious resistance, and yet another reminder that margins are tiny at the very top.
Lakshya Sen’s year has been sharper in contrast. The high-water mark remains Paris 2024, where he became the first Indian man to reach an Olympic singles semi-final and finished an agonising fourth after a bronze-medal loss to Lee Zii Jia. Less than 13 months later, the draw gods were unkind: he opened at Worlds against World No. 1 Shi Yu Qi and went out in straight games. The take-away is two-fold. Lakshya has proved he belongs in the sport’s top tier on the biggest stage; the task now is to turn those deep runs into consistent week-in, week-out results, and to engineer better early-round protection via ranking points.
PV Sindhu: a familiar surge, and the next act
Sindhu’s fortnight in Paris was the clearest signal yet that her reboot is real. After an injury-interrupted 2024 and a hamstring issue that forced her to miss the Asia Mixed Team event earlier this year, she changed gears with a new coach and a fresh training block. The outcome: a measured, mature takedown of China’s World No. 2 Wang Zhiyi in the round of 16 and an all-action quarter-final she narrowly lost to Indonesia’s Putri Kusuma Wardani.
For a player who measures seasons by medals, falling one step short will sting. But stylistically there were encouraging signs — crisper first-three-shot patterns, more patient rally construction, and the familiar kill when the opening came. The ‘final-week player’ version of Sindhu is not gone; she is actively trying to summon it more often.
Men’s doubles: Satwik-Chirag’s floor is a medal
Reddy–Shetty now carry a medal aura. Their bronze in Paris — their second at the Worlds — felt less like a surprise and more like the minimum you expect of them now. They have learned how to manage tournament weeks, to ride momentum in faster halls, and to scrap when the shuttle drags. That they still left the arena ruing chances says something about how high they have raised the bar.
Remember, this comes a year after a quarter-final exit at the Paris Olympics to their Malaysian nemeses Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik. The trend line, however, remains upward: India’s first Asian Games men’s doubles champions (2023) are, on balance, entering every big draw among the two or three pairs to beat. The next leap is fitness and freshness deep into weekends — exactly what India’s doubles coach has flagged as the difference between bronze and Sunday.
Mixed doubles: a door finally creaks open
India has never won a mixed doubles medal at the Worlds. In Paris, Dhruv Kapila and Tanisha Crasto came as close as any Indian pair has in recent memory — upsetting fifth seeds Tang Chun Man and Tse Ying Suet to reach the last eight before losing to eventual world champions Chen Tang Jie and Toh Ee Wei.
It was not quite history, but it felt like a hinge moment: India showed it can generate threats in a discipline long dominated by China, Japan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. With more time together, better serve-return numbers, and specialised mixed-doubles coaching, that quarter-final wall begins to look less like concrete and more like plywood.
Women’s doubles: depth, then disruption
For a stretch across late 2023 and early 2025, India’s women’s doubles appeared to be assembling depth. Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, coach Pullela Gopichand’s daughter, climbed the rankings with a string of steady results; Ashwini Ponnappa partnered Tanisha Crasto to encouraging wins; younger pairs gained seasoning on the World Tour.
Then injuries and withdrawals blew holes in the hull. Treesa–Gayatri missed key events with shoulder and back trouble and pulled out of the World Championships close to the draw. In Paris, the replacement pairs — Priya Konjengbam–Shruti Mishra and Rutaparna–Swetaparna Panda — were hustled out in the opening round. On paper, this is a temporary dip. In practice, it underlines how fragile momentum can be in doubles: one niggle can undo months of positional chemistry and leave draw slots exposed.
The pattern line: peaks and plateaus
Zoom out, and the pattern is clear. Since 2017, India has lived on a steady diet of epochal highs — World and Olympic medals in singles, a Thomas Cup crown in 2022, an Asian Games team title in 2023, and a men’s doubles pair ranked No. 1 — and equally visible troughs: injury cycles, shallow mixed doubles returns, and a women’s doubles pipeline constantly resetting. As one recent analysis framed it, the sport is at a mild crossroads: the global field is deeper, the tactical ceiling keeps rising, and India must decide whether to double down on the current cohort or accelerate a broader refresh. The answer, predictably, is both.
What the big four tell us
HS Prannoy still beats the world’s most elite players on feel, variation, and bravery at the end of long rallies. The cost is that his body pays a toll to stay fast, hit as powerfully as he does, and produce those near-impossible performances. The calendar management he hinted at after Paris — fewer starts, targeted peaks — ought to be embraced by the system. Protect the asset and pick the hills worth dying on.
Lakshya Sen has the game to live in the top eight permanently — tight defence, quick racket head, cat’s reflexes that buy him time, and a willingness to play at the tape. The work now is structural: small improvements in lift depth when under pressure, a more reliable short serve under heat, and a season plan that banks ranking points outside the five super-majors so he avoids murderous first rounds.
PV Sindhu looks close to that familiar “second-week” machine again. The Wang Zhiyi upset was built on first-shot clarity and purposeful court positioning — vintage Sindhu. The quarter-final loss a day later showed what still needs sharpening: shot tolerance in slow patches and the ability to flip a tactical script mid-match. The new coaching setup and the decision to reset after the hamstring scare indicate a camp that knows exactly what it is chasing in the last phase of a storied career.
Satwik–Chirag set the competitive standard for India in 2023–25. Their bronze was secured not because they were red-hot, but because their B-game has matured: tempo control on serve-receive, fewer cheap errors, and better “body-line” attacks when opponents sit on the lines. The coaching note is obvious: keep them fresh. Their explosiveness is a weapon, but only if they are arriving on semi-final Saturdays with enough in the legs to play two high-octane matches back-to-back.
Systems, not slogans
The road ahead is less about slogans and more about systems. Three ideas stand out.
- Calendar curation and sports science. India’s best are still playing too many heavy weeks. Peak-for-purpose programming — where training blocks, minor events, and signature tournaments are sequenced — must become non-negotiable. Singles bodies and doubles pair dynamics both benefit from freshness. (Prannoy’s own hints are a good template.)
- Specialised doubles coaching. Mixed doubles’ quarter-final in Paris was not a fluke; it was a product of a pairing finally spending time together and believing in set plays. Doubling the investment in mixed-specific patterns — serve-third ball aggression, woman-at-the-net variations, man’s mid-court interceptions — can open a podium door that has stayed stubbornly shut. Women’s doubles, likewise, needs continuity of pairings and a fit-for-purpose rehab pipeline so injuries do not cascade into missed qualification windows.
- Domestic pressure from below. The senior core is proven. What India now requires is internal competition — the kind that keeps selection honest and training brutal. That means more depth on the Challenge/International Series tiers, more smart scheduling for the 18-to-22 cohort, and support for two-discipline athletes until they settle. It is no accident that countries with thick pipelines dominate the back half of tournaments.
The verdict
Where it stands now, Indian badminton is neither in decline nor at a perfect peak. It is poised. The Worlds showed that India is still in the medal picture in men’s doubles and women’s singles on the biggest stage. It also showed that men’s singles depth still swings on form and fitness, that mixed doubles have real headroom, and that women’s doubles requires an urgent stabilisation plan. To convert this blend into a sustainable era, India must be as relentless with systems as its athletes are with shuttles.
The upside is obvious. Prannoy’s courage, Lakshya’s ceiling, Sindhu’s muscle memory, Satwik–Chirag’s consistency, Dhruv–Tanisha’s spark, and the promise of a healthy Treesa–Gayatri give India multiple ways to win. The risk is equally clear: a few injuries, a few bad draws, and the narrative flips to “what might have been.” For a country that has learned to live with both joy and jeopardy in badminton, that tension is nothing new. What matters is the next step — and in this sport, as in life, that step is everything.
Also Read: Court Rules Against Paranjoy Guha Thakurta & Others in Adani Defamation Suit
