India’s premier men’s badminton player, Kidambi Srikanth, will be one of the players to watch out for as the Denmark Open Superseries Premier gets underway on Thursday.
The 24-year-old could potentially meet local hero and the reigning world champion Viktor Axelsen in the quarter-finals. Srikanth, however, is not losing sweat over the clash despite having faced straight game losses in his last three outings against the Dane.
“He has definitely grown as a player,” Srikanth was quoted as saying by PTI ahead of his opening match against compatriot Subhankar Dey. “I won against him twice, both the times in the finals of Swiss and India Open and the last three times he came out on top. We have different body types. Everytime we play it is different.”
He added, “I once played against him in Dubai in my fifth continuous tournament in 2015 and I couldn’t push myself and then I played against him at India Open this year. I was coming back from injury and he was on top of his game and he outplayed me and the last time was in Japan and it could have been anyone’s game at 17-all in first game.
“I would say I played him fairly well and I don’t have any regrets and the next time I play him, it will be a different match and I don’t want to think about past results and put some sort of pressure. It is always fresh conditions for me.”
‘Fairly good year’
Talking about the year gone by when he won the Indonesia Super Series Premier and Australian Open besides reaching the finals of Singapore Open, Srikanth said: “It has been a fairly good year for me so far. The beginning was not that good. After coming back from injury, I played really well. There are four more Super Series tournaments to go and I really want to finish well.”
Asked if there is any particular issue which he had trouble getting over, Srikanth said: “Every time someone asks me this question, I only think about the Rio Olympics quarter-finals, nothing else comes to my mind. I really feel the Olympic loss made all the other losses look really small.
“I don’t think about the losses, never did. I am okay to take the loss, it is just that I want to learn from those,” added Srikanth, who had lost in the Rio Games quarterfinals to two- ime Olympic champion Lin Dan in a closely-fought tie.
With a number of the big-ticket events coming up next year, Srikanth is looking to be in best shape for the important tournaments and said scheduling will be important to achieve success in a gruelling season.
“I really want to play a fixed number of tournaments and don’t want to play all the tournaments and push myself for the ranking. I will play around 10 tournaments and then play Commonwealth, Asian Games and World Championship and then there is Syed Modi which is compulsory and PBL, so it would make it 15-17 tournaments anyway,” he said.
Srikanth needs to be more consistent, says Axelsen’s coach
Axelsen’s coach Kenneth Jonassen rated Srikanth as one of the toughest players to beat but at the same time urged the Indian to be more consistent.
“For me world No 1 doesn’t matter. It is about being able to peak at right time at Olympics, World Championship, Thomas Cup, that’s the key. Srikanth is one of the more talented players by far. He looks so athletic on court but I think he needs to be more consistent,” Jonassen was quoted as saying.
“The transition that I have seen in him in last six months has been amazing. I count him one of the toughest players. He plays very well against Chen Long. He is difficult for anybody to beat, so it is a matter of time.
“Of course, I don’t know him, I don’t know how he is to work with, I don’t know what he is going through mentally. From my point of view, just by looking at him the kind of talent he is, he is already doing great and he has the potential to go far,” Jonassen said when asked about his opinion about Srikanth.