He now has confidence to take on any opponent, says Sankar Muthusamy's coach Aravindan

The 19-year-old achieved his career best ranking of WR-71 earlier this week.

Sankar Muthusamy for the past year has been making steady progress in the international circuit. From reaching the top 100, the young lad from Tamil Nadu is currently ranked 71 in BWF singles rankings after a quarter-finals finish in the US Open 2023. The World Junior 2022 silver medalist defeated WR-32 Nhat Nyugen and WR-35 Misha Zilberman in the US Open before going losing out to compatriot Lakshya Sen in the quarters.

Khel Now got an opportunity to talk with his childhood coach Aravindan Samiappan, who described Sankar's progress over the years and the future ahead. Here are the excerpts.

Thoughts on Sankar's recent performance in US Open

Sankar has predominantly been a defensive player with good deceiving skills but in the US Open, he brought in his attacking skills, helping add more variety into his game play.

Aravindan Samiappan iterated, "Sankar's natural game is defence but with growing demand he needs to attack as well. With the current competition level, one cannot be predictable rather needs to show variety to outplay the opponents. We have been working on his attacking game for a long time and the result was there to see in the US Open last week. Sometimes when we are playing at the highest level, the results don't come thick and fast, rather have focus on the process.

"In sports, even if we are improving you need results to implement certain set of things in the matches. A few months back he won the International series in Luxembourg by defeating good set of players through his attacking game, but with US Open being a bigger tournament the performance got noticed by many. Though Sankar has been improving steadily for the past six to seven months, it is only recently he has got the confidence of being a good attacking player.

"A good win against a quality player boosted his confidence. To be more precise a title win in Europe was morale boosting for him and now he has the confidence to play against any opponent which wasn't the case before the Luxembourg Open."

Talks with Sankar after reaching the quarter-finals

"His father Subramanian travels with Sankar for tournaments, and I usually talk less during the tournaments. I talk a lot with Sankar when he comes to Chennai where we discuss the gameplay and other stuff but that is not the case when he travels for tournaments. Sankar's father was a former athlete and knows the sport very well, so they discuss among themselves and at times, I also add my inputs after the match gets concluded."

Plans going ahead

"The plan was always to play 15 to 20 tournaments a year irrespective of the results. Our intention is to always play more matches than usual which gives us more chance to succeed. But playing more tournaments is at time riskier with respect to recovery, mental exhaustion, travelling etc. With Sankar being young he has the liberty to take risks and play more by staying fit both physically and mentally.

"Going forward with two good tournaments he can get close to the top 50, post which we will have the luxury of choosing which meets to take part."

Growth of Badminton in Tamil Nadu

Recently BWF released two articles on the growth of badminton in Tamil Nadu. There are several players who are coming up in the sub-junior and junior circuit in Tamil Nadu and making a mark in the national level.

Sankar's coach said on the growth, "The sport has achieved good success in TN which is mainly due to players taking it up professionally. Seven years back the the state champions would be playing badminton part time and had no ambitions of playing in the national or the international tournaments.

"If you are playing the sport only in the evenings/part time, then ultimately you cannot beat players from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, or Karnataka etc. Barring one or two no one took up the sport seriously and there weren't any investments either.

"But now we have close to 200 players in few districts like Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai etc. who are playing full time — the main difference for the sport to evolve well and in return produce more quality players.

"We have good set of players who have gone onto perform well in the sub junior and junior setup but now the players have to show good results in the senior set up as well which will ultimately happen with time. The 'senior' set up is entirely a different ball game where you have to play with your international ranking rather not the BAI ranking. So, for getting good senior rankings, the players need funding and also need to have a good batch of players playing together (sparring partners).

"In Hyderabad, we have the Gopichand academy where top players train together and in Bengaluru there is Prakash Padukone academy who also have a big pool of quality players. There top players can get to practise alongside good sparring partners, which isn't the case here. Both the academies have good infrastructure for the seniors and to match that isn't that easy.

"TN currently is marching ahead and in another four to five years we will be having good centres which will produce good number senior players alongside the juniors and sub-juniors.

Fireball Academy vision going forward

Aravindan Samiappan runs a badminton academy called Fireball academy in Chennai. Sankar Muthusamy has been training here since the age of 7 and since has produced great results.

"I am already in look out for expanding my centre for the past two years for which I also require good financial support through joint ventures. Tamil Nadu Badminton Association is also looking to set up residential academies which should materialize soon.

"For the sport to get to the next level we definitely need improve the infrastructure which is starting to take place."