Following her bronze-medal finish at the recently-concluded World badminton Championships, India's top shuttler P V Sindhu has re-entered the top-10 in the latest Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings, released on Thursday.
The unprecedented health crisis forced an indefinite shutdown of all sports activities -- both contact and non-contact. The FICCI said non-contact sports can resume first by maintaining social distancing norms.
Anup Sridhar, India's top singles player, attained a career best ranking of 25, according to the latest Badminton World Federation's (BWF) ranking list.
A team mate of Japanese badminton Olympic medal hope Kento Momota on Friday confessed to taking the world number two-ranked player to an illegal casino and tearfully begged officials to allow the star to compete at the Rio de Janeiro Games.
Pullela Gopichand called P V Sindhu and Saina Nehwal -- his two most successful pupils -- as 'precious diamonds'.
The Indian Olympic Association and the federations might be against it but the National Sports Bill has got a collective thumbs up from India's top athletes, who feel the draft has the potential to drastically change the country's sports scene.
These athletes made India proud four years ago.
The money-spinning Indian Premier League has mulled a closed-door edition in a desperate bid to avoid cancellation as the deadly COVID-19 sent Indian sports into quarantine after a government directive for fans to be kept away from all action to prevent the pandemic from spreading.
This is the second time in her career, after April 6 this year that Rio Olympics silver medallist Sindhu has occupied the second spot on the leaderboard.
Abhinav Bindra stressed on the importance of high performance programs for producing champions
Far from mourning the end of her brief reign as the world number one, shuttler Saina Nehwal is happy that she at least made it to where no other non-Chinese could reach in the last four years.
India has been battling a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that has forced many countries to ban travellers from India.
Age-fudging has been a big problem in Indian sports
India's ace shuttler Parupalli Kashyap, who recently triumphed in the Syed Modi International India Grand Prix, made a leap of six places to reach a career-best ranking of 14th in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings released on Thursday.
Using a sledgehammer to fix some ills can cut down a game at its peak, warns Shekhar Gupta.
The Indian ace, who attained a career-best No 1 after winning the India Open at the end of March, dropped a rung in the latest Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings, released on Thursday. Defeat in the semi-finals of the Malaysia Open Super Series Premier to reigning Olympic champion Li Xuerui of China saw the London Olympics bronze medallist drop to No 2.
The IOA also said that the decision will now relieve the Indian athletes of having to train amidst lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Ace Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal has been nominated for the Woman Player of the Year Award of the Badminton World Federation after a consistent season which saw her occupy the world number one spot for a brief period.
India's chief badminton coach Pullela Gopichand believes the Tokyo Olympics should be postponed given the unprecedented crisis that the world is facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Saina Nehwal and P V Sindhu are on a collision course at next week's World Championships in Basel, Switzerland, as they have been placed in the same half after the world governing body re-conducted the women's singles draw.
Indian Women's Hockey team leaves for Argentina tour.
The Sports Authority of India (SAI) put in place 14 high-level expert committees, which have been mandated to identify the country's medal prospects and provide them with specialised training in the run up to the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games to be held later this year.
Far from mourning the end of her brief reign as the World No 1, shuttler Saina Nehwal is happy.
Indian star shuttler Saina Nehwal regained the No 1 spot in the latest Badminton World Federation rankings.
Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth won their respective singles matches, while Satwik Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa triumphed in the mixed doubles to help India outclass Malaysia in the final and clinch the gold medal in the Mixed Team badminton gold medal match at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
>There's still hope and plenty to play for, says Rediff.com's Aruneel Sadadekar.
They shut up the naysers with sheer success.
The Sports Ministry on Monday decided to recommend ace shuttler Saina Nehwal for the Padma Bhushan award but insisted that it did not receive her nomination from the Badminton Association of India (BAI) within the stipulated deadline.
'I have grown up in an environment where the dominant narrative of Indian sporting achievement was -- We can't.' 'These achievers have fought hard, built on each other's body of work and knowledge, and have today changed the script to -- We can,' notes Rahul Dravid,cricketing legend.
Embattled shuttler Jwala Gutta said the national federation should not construe her "suggestions" as criticism since she had nothing against them and imposition of a life ban because of her blunt talking would be "silly".
Badminton Association of India secretary-general Vijai Sinha has alleged that certain individuals within the federation are fuelling rumours about star shuttler Jwala Gutta's link-up with former India skipper Mohammad Azharuddin. He called upon the officials and members of the BAI to stand alongside players under attack and foil the ill attempts being made against them.
The Sports Ministry's nominee, Madhumita Bisht, will travel to Hyderabad and meet with the players to end the impasse.
The centuries-old tradition of yoga is looking towards the reality television concept to increase its popularity
From Covid-19 essentials, such as Vitamin C supplements and thermometers, to bicycles, laptops, and personal weighing scales, demand for certain items galloped during last financial year as the pandemic altered what Indians used on a day-to-day basis. Imports of outdoor sports equipment, handbags for women, and dentures, among others, plummeted. With outdoor activities coming to a halt last year and schools functioning virtually, imports of sports goods witnessed a decline, while inbound shipments of laptops and battery chargers saw a sharp uptick, according to the import data for the financial year 2020-21.
A summary of sports events and persons who made news on Sunday
The new BWF rule which makes wearing skirts on court mandatory for female shuttlers from May 1 is something that the Indian eves are finding it a bit uncomfortable.
Embattled shuttler Jwala Gutta moved the Delhi high court on Wednesday against the Badminton Association of India after its disciplinary committee recommended a life ban on her for an alleged code of conduct breach in the Indian Badminton League.
Despite clinching the Syed Modi Grand Prix Gold men's title, India's K Srikanth remained static at World No. 9 while P V Sindhu dropped a place to be No.12 in the latest Badminton World Federation rankings released on Thursday. The women's singles' ranking list had Saina Nehwal holding on to her World No. 2. place despite skipping the Lucknow event, where she was the defending champion. Runners-up in men's doubles event at Syed Modi, Indian pair of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and Akshay Dewalkar improved two places to be at World No. 34, while Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy, who lost in the opening round at Lucknow, dropped two places to be at No. 20. A quarterfinal loss at Syed Modi event also had an adverse affect on P Kashyap as he slipped to World No. 15, while H S Prannoy slumped seven places to be at 27th spot. Ajay Jayaram was static at No. 25.
Projected as an outsider by the ruling camp, cricketer-turned-politician Mohammad Azharuddin on Thursday fired a salvo at Badminton Association of India president VK Verma, saying the BAI chief is not eligible for re-election and should gracefully walk after having played a "long innings".
Also seen in action for India will be the shuttlers, boxers, the women's hockey team and the table tennis players among others.
