As champions rise, a wave follows | Satwik-Chirag badminton doubles win keeps the Saina-Sindhu crest going

In badminton doubles star Chirag Shetty’s Mumbai backyard at Goregaon Sports Club, a national-ranking tournament ended up needing five days of qualification rounds to whittle it down to four days of main draw action.

The last national ranking in Goa had 2,200 shuttler entries, with qualifying rounds going on till 3 am. At the Panjim tournament, 26 courts were simultaneously running across two halls. And still, the organisers needed nine days to wrap up the event, where Under-17 gold was the biggest prize.

Badminton, which continues to grow exponentially even after the Saina Nehwal-P V Sindhu crest has ridden the wave for a good decade and the duo are no longer Top-5 staples, throws up gigantic numbers. Doubles entries are now reaching unprecedented heights, on the back of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty’s success. Theirs is the first Indian pair to reach World No 1 after winning Asian Games & Championships gold and Commonwealth Games gold, besides world championship events.

Shetty has noticed the difference. “When I started playing, the number of double entries was far less. It is definitely on the rise. You see a lot of people playing only doubles. When we started playing doubles, it was far less. Now, there are kids focussing only on doubles right since Under-15s, Under-17s which is a welcome change,” he says.

The men’s and women’s singles trends haven’t abated either, with an ordinary senior ranking meet at Bengaluru, easily breaching 1,000 entries, across five categories.

Eight of the 10 states The Indian Express spoke to have reported a minimum of 10% increase in entries — in both singles and doubles — at the state rankings each subsequent year. “All India for Under-13 and Under-15 might be triple the numbers compared to three years ago, though there were just 700 for Under-13 at Thane last year,” says Greater Mumbai Badminton Association’s Manigrish Palekar, who saw entries at a junior state selection meet go from 620 to 870 in two years, a nearly 40% rise.

The past decade’s biggest gain, said Badminton Association of India (BAI) secretary Sanjay Mishra, is the sport’s expanding geography. Where earlier, most shuttlers aiming for elite success came from Hyderabad and Bengaluru and its tertiary areas in the two southern states, players from Punjab to Mizoram, and Uttarakhand to Tamil Nadu are now emerging in large numbers, with access to basic facilities and upskilling of grassroot coaches.

“Entries between 2,500-3,000 are very common. The popularity of badminton is like cricket — and increasing every year,” Mishra says. “An Under-15 and Under-17 tournament in Karnataka last season attracted between 2,600-2,700 entries. But it is really all over India, even in small centres,” he says.

Even remote venues like Raigad and Chandrapur (in Maharashtra), Khammam and Mahabubnagar (in Telangana), and Shimoga (in Karnataka) easily received 400 entries over the last two seasons in Under-13 and Under-15s. Though Nasik didn’t attract huge entries this September for a district event, a 12-court facility there is now ready to host future mammoth events.

However the biggest trend, Mishra reckoned, to emerge from the last few years is shuttlers looking at doubles seriously, with many talented pairings deciding early on to pick the paired event.

The mainstreaming of doubles counters a peculiar problem in India, where singles was prioritised after Prakash Padukone, Pullela Gopichand, Nehwal, Sindhu and Srikanth Kidambi’s success. Back then, the paired event was an afterthought. Not any more.

Satwik and Chirag are directly responsible for the difference. “Plenty of people have walked up to us to say that we were the reason why they started playing and focussing on doubles. People actually see a possibility in playing doubles and making it a career option. It feels good when you see so many people picking up doubles and saying they were inspired to pick it up because of you,” Shetty says.

From 2012 to 2022, the Krishna Khaitan Memorial, India’s premier junior ranking event at Panchkula, saw a 100% increase in the Under-19 boys doubles. This happened as soon as it became apparent that Indians could crack the men’s doubles code in which there was barely any notable history before the Satwik and Chirag pairing. Entries for Under-19 went from 104 in 2012 to 208 pairs in 2022. The trend resonates across India.

“Satwik and Chirag’s good performance has had a direct impact on the increase in doubles entries. No more playing all three events (singles, doubles, mixed doubles) and deciding on doubles after failing in singles,” says Siddharth Patil, secretary, Maharashtra Badminton Association.

“The rise is significant in doubles,” says Rajesh Reddy, secretary, Karnataka Badminton Association (KBA). “All three events get big entries. But since Satwik and Chirag, the quality of players in doubles is very high, tough from round one. They are serious and they think their chances of succeeding are good.”

Perhaps the doubles boom is more noticeable in other centres, as reflected in state selection entries. Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Mizoram are witnessing massive numbers compared to even three years ago.

Mizoram Badminton Association secretary K Vanlaldinpuia said there was a massive uptick in “high-quality” badminton in the state after a leading corporate pumped in money for 40 grassroot centres, and national coach Pullela Gopichand personally camped there to scout for talent to start delivering results in upcoming two seasons of world junior championships.

Doubles specialist C Lalramsanga,who helped India win its first ever mixed-team junior Worlds bronze, comes from the outskirts of Aizawl, Mizoram, while singles silver medallist Tanvi Sharma is from Hoshiarpur in Punjab.

Rajasthan, Delhi and Haryana have all seen infrastructure keep pace with interested talent and stronger physiques, and no hang-ups whatsoever about jumping headlong into power-packed adrenaline-fuelled men’s doubles.

“State ranking entries went up from 517 in 2022 to 893 in 2024, a 70% increase. Our doubles talent is tall and strong,” says KK Sharma, the Rajasthan Badminton Association secretary from Bhilwara, a city earlier known for volleyball and basketball players.

Tamil Nadu Badminton Association secretary VE Arunachallam mentioned a “triplefold increase” in entries from 2021, even as he lamented dropouts due to academic pressures in the state that worships education. Even so, entries reached a 500-mark for Under-17s last year.

Counter-intuitively, the absence of global stars in mixed doubles — though Jwala Gutta-V Diju reached World No 6 a decade-and-a-half ago — has seen many sensing an opportunity in the event, where Indians are still trying to breakthrough, with Dhruv Kapila and Tanisha Crasto.

“I actually don’t know why mixed doubles numbers are increasing,” laughs a befuddled Mangrish. “But I know small academies were shopping for mixed doubles specialist coaches from Indonesia. The specialisation is happening in mixed doubles, which was never seen before. Not only are they saying no to singles, they are also ruling out men’s or women’s doubles. It’s laser focus on XD (mixed doubles),” he says.