The Hindu : Sport / Badminton : Chetan keen to fight his way back

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Tuesday, Aug 07, 2007
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Sport - Badminton

Chetan keen to fight his way back

Stan Rayan

After falling out with the BAI, it’s tough times Chetan

Ranked 33, he has to qualify for international tournaments

KOCHI: As he steadily climbed the World badminton rankings ladder a year ago, almost knocking on the doors of the top 20, one thought Chetan Anand was finally living up to his potential.

Chetan has been considered as a player who could be among the World’s best for long.

How times change.

These days, he slogs on a hard and bumpy road.

Ranked 33, Chetan is now forced to sweat through merciless qualifiers in international tournaments.

And after having taken on the might of the Badminton Association of India (BAI) a few months ago, one gets the feeling that he gets little help from the establishment now.

The 26-year-old is now preparing for next week’s World championships in Kuala Lumpur, but there are very few quality youngsters who can make him sweat at the ongoing National camp in Kochi.

“I need good sparring partners to train and that’s a problem here.

We have mostly juniors,” Chetan said at the Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium here on Monday.

“In Hyderabad, we had Anup Sridhar and Nikhil and it was easier to take on different types of players.”

Unhappy

Chetan also has reason to be unhappy with the BAI for allowing Sridhar — the second-ranked Indian and World No.41 — to skip the National camp and train in Malaysia on his own with quality players there.

Three months ago, when Chetan, his wife Jwala, and her doubles partner, Shruti Kurien, wanted to play Super Series tournaments in Singapore and Indonesia and gain ranking points with an eye on next year’s Beijing Olympics, the BAI did not permit them to go, insisting that it was mandatory for players to attend National camps, one of which was then on in Hyderabad.

BAI also dropped the three from the Indian team for the Sudirman Cup after they skipped the National camp in protest.

Compromise formula

A compromise formula was later worked which stressed on the need to attend National camps even while allowing Chetan to play in a couple of international tournaments.

“That way, it was not fair (on the BAI’s part) to allow Sridhar to skip the National camp and go abroad for training,” he said.

But after having suffered enough, Chetan is now keen to fight his way back.

“We were not training for the last three months. And as my rankings fell after I missed two tournaments, I was forced to play the qualifiers in the China Super Series last month,” he said.

“It’s never easy to play the qualifiers. Often you have three matches in a day and there’s just about 45 minutes to an hour’s gap between matches. One tough match and you’re totally drained,” Chetan said about his loss in the qualifying rounds in China.

“In the main draw, you get to play only one match every day and if there are two, there’s a long gap.”

Two years ago, he trained with Morten Frost in Denmark for three months.

“I played with players who played at the same speed as me. I was also comfortable in tournaments… was used to that speed,” he said.

The experience helped. “After that, I won four Satellite tournaments, the Welsh, Toulose, Irish and Sri Lankan Opens, and also reached the final in Iceland.

I also did well in the Thomas Cup. During the middle of last year, I reached 21, my best World ranking.”

Chetan feels he can regain his touch and best ranking soon. “I need to work on my defence and side movements. And once I start playing more tournaments, I should be back in the top 20,” he said.

Does he regret the fight with BAI which did so much damage to his game? Which got him the ‘rebel’ tag? “No. I still feel that I fought for a just cause,” he said.

“It’s a fundamental right for a player to play in tournaments.”

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