‘I was upset over losing No.1 spot’

Sabi Hussain

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 17

Shuttle queen Saina Nehwal is back where she belongs — at the top of the women’s singles rankings.

It was on March 28 that she was crowned the World No.1 for the first time, though the official announcement about her elevation had come only on April 2. And barely three days later, Saina lost her coveted crown to China’s Li Xuerui after losing a tough three-setter to the London Olympic champion in the semifinal of the Malaysia Open earlier this month. The defeat left the 25-year-old Hyderabadi shuttler heartbroken. “It was difficult to leave the top spot within a week’s time. It was not a good feeling,” Saina told The Tribune in an email interview.

However, Xuerui’s stay at the top proved to be short lived after the Chinese shuttler, along with Saina and Spain’s Carolina Marin, skipped last week’s Singapore Open. This resulted in Saina leapfrogging Xuerui to the No.1 spot when the new rankings were released on Thursday. Saina moved up from No.2, while Xuerui fell to No.3 with All England champion Marin also rising one place to take the No.2 spot.

“When Xuerui pulled out of the championship, it was known to all the players that she will lose points since she had played in the Singapore Open last year (where she finished as runner-up) whereas, I wasn’t supposed to lose points. I knew it that I will be No.1 again,” she said. Saina has been in tremendous form this year, having won the Indian Open and the Syed Modi Grand Prix International and finishing second in the All-England Open, where she lost in the final to Marin.

Saina had dropped to lowly ninth in the rankings in June 2014 after a string of poor results which resulted in her taking the bold decision of splitting with mentor Pullela Gopichand and head to Bangalore to train under Vimal Kumar. Since then, Saina has steadily climbed back up the rankings.

“If you look at my performance in the last seven months, it’s been wonderful. I played in six tournaments and won 3 of them besides finishing as runners-up in two. Training under Vimal sir has helped me a lot. But, I would also like to thank my other coaches, S M Arif, Mahboob Ali and Gopichand sir for their contribution in my success. They all made me the champion,” she said.

Apart from performing consistently over the past few months, what has immensely satisfied Saina is that she has been able to breach the Chinese wall by regularly beating them. She said it feels great that Chinese players are no longer the dominant force. “I am satisfied with my win against them. It’s good to beat them. Hopefully, the future generation will find it easy to emulate my success. But, having said it, the Chinese won’t stop here and rather will come back in big way.”