Kidambi Srikanth Sportsperson Of The Year

Four Superseries titles in a season is a feat that has been achieved by just four players in the history of badminton and Kidambi Srikanth is one of them. He always had the pedigree to reach greatness and he sure is en route to accomplishing that with distinction

- Vaibhav Raghunandan

For Kidambi Srikanth, 2016 ended in misery and injury, and what looked like a long road back. Riding a wave of expectation, he had been knocked out of the Olympics, in the quarterfinals, after an indifferent season on the Superseries court. His loss at the Olympics was particularly jarring. He had, after all, gone down in an epic 68 minutes to the most gifted and decorated player of a generation, Lin Dan. He had lost an encounter that he couldn’t have started off worse in, taking just six points in the opening game. From there, he pushed on, and pushed hard, just not enough to dethrone the king. He could’ve locked himself in a room, and endlessly thought about this, the medal within his grasp, and how much he would miss it. Instead, he chose to correct it.

As season openers went, the Syed Modi International was loaded with hope. It was in some ways a tournament of reckoning—Srikanth’s return after an Olympic year. What would happen to the boy who won without emotion, but had lost them (it wasn’t true, but as far as stories go it provided a fitting narrative). Indian badminton’s focus was on P.V. Sindhu, and Srikanth, devoid of the spotlight, and the expectation that came with it, was braving it on his own.

The greatest seasons can sometimes begin with the dullest of starts. For the first three tournaments of 2017—after a Syed Modi semifinal finish—Srikanth’s best return was a quarterfinal loss to Olympic champion Chen Long at the German Open. And then, in Singapore, Srikanth made it to his first Superseries final in over two years, and first final in over a year, and faced compatriot B. Sai Praneeth. Praneeth won the battle, winning in three games, and taking his overall record against his countryman to 4 –0, but—and nobody knew this at the time—Srikanth was just warming up for the war.