The Hindu : Sport / Badminton : Mist envelops BAI's Vision 2010

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jul 22, 2006

Sport

Sport - Badminton

Mist envelops BAI's Vision 2010

Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD : The BAI's camp called Vision 2010 has run into rough weather on several fronts. Even as the National coach P. Gopi Chand has been monitoring the camp at the Gachibowli indoor stadium, a parallel camp has come up at the Lal Bahadur indoor stadium.

Former national champion Chetan Anand and his wife Jwala Gutta, National doubles champion, are training along with others under the tutelage of Dronacharya awardee S.M. Arif at the Lal Bahadur stadium while Jwala's doubles partners Shruthi Kurien (women) and V. Diju (mixed doubles) are at the other venue.

The two champion shuttlers had personally sought the help of Arif, a former national coach who has been asked to groom young talent by the Sports Authority of Andhra Pradesh. He was not keen to entertain any questions on whether this move constituted a split amongst the badminton players. He insisted that he was back to coaching for the love of it.

Reasons

For his part Chetan Anand said he had avoided the national camp because he now wanted to plan his career by selecting some big international events to enable him to break into the world's top 20 at the earliest. Chetan will be playing in the Thailand Open next week and is not keen to join the national camp. He had already written a letter to the BAI seeking permission for this.

Jwala's official reason for skipping the Gachibowli camp was that she was preparing for her Degree examinations.

Reacting to the developments, Gopi Chand was guarded in his comments. "As individuals they are welcome to take decisions which they feel is good for them and the sport," he said.

However, according to BAI sources Chetan was offered the privilege of training in the Asian circuit along with four of the top 15 players in the world but he refused it saying that he wanted to chalk out his own schedule.

P. Goverdhan, a SAAP badminton coach who was involved in Gopi's camp has also moved over saying he will now be the travelling coach for Chetan and Jwala. "Gopi anna (brother) told me `if you feel it is a better offer, you can certainly take it up,'" Goverdhan said.

Replying to the charge by some players that his national camp was focussing more on the juniors and ignoring the seniors, Gopi asserted that the focus was on Vision 2010 and not short-term gains.

"There is no real talented combination in women's and men's doubles aged between 18 and 25. And we continue to look at Diju, Jwala and Shruthi. It is for these reasons that we decided to lay emphasis both on juniors and seniors simultaneously. We are not ignoring the latter," he said.

Moreover, the doubles coach from Indonesia — Hagi Sugiyanto — has abandoned his training programme with the Indian team after being asked to pay tax by the Finance Ministry. "We have not heard anything from him so far," said Gopi.

Players, however, are in a dilemma since they cannot ignore either Arif or Gopi. They are hoping that BAI convenes a meeting to come up with a compromise which will be good for the sport.

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