Kidambi Srikanth all set for gold in the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games 2018
March 10, 2018
World number 3 Kidambi Srikanth is all set to take charge of India’s badminton campaign at the 2018 CWG scheduled to be held in the Gold Coast. Interesting, Srikanth had withdrawn from playing the year end tournaments of 2017 to focus on the Games. A good performance in 2017 could have seen him at the top of the rankings.
“For me, winning a medal at the Commonwealth and Asian Games is more important. If I wanted to be World No 1 and not win tournaments (CWG or Asiad), I would have pushed myself to play China and Hong Kong Open last year after the French Open,” he said on the importance of the upcoming event for him.
India is fielding a contingent of 10 players in 5 different events in April. This presents a strong case for medals in at least 3 of these events- the Men’s singles, the Women’s singles and the Team event. He himself commented on the strength of the line-up. “I would say European nations are doing well and we are the only nation (India) to have five men’s singles player in top 20.”
He clarified that the nation has always come first for the Tamil Nadu player. “And the kind of form I was in, I would have managed to play quarter finals in both the events and I would have gone on to become World No 1 but I wanted to win tournaments rather than think about rankings. So I opted out of those tournaments and gave my body extra time to recover from injury,” Srikanth said
