Race to Dubai gets tougher for Kidambi

Dubai - Srikanth trying to make it to his second straight finals

Kidambi Srikanth and Peter Gade took time to pass on some advice to the youngsters who attended the Shuttle Time Dubai school badminton finals at the Dubai Stars Sportsplex in Al Mizhar on Tuesday.
Srikanth is currently on the borderline of trying to make it to his second straight $1 million BWF MetLife Super Series finals in Dubai later this year as one of the eight top players in the world super series rankings.
"After a fine start I have slipped slightly and the latest rounds - the Danish and French opens - were not very adventurous for me recently. This leaves the super series events in China and Hong Kong as critical," said Srikanth.
The young sensation from India stormed into the year-end Dubai finals last season with a stunning victory over legend Lin Dan in the final of the China Open, and here at the Dubai event which is a four-year, year-end stop for the Tour, Srikanth entered the semifinals only to lose to the supreme shuttler from China, Chen Long.
"There are many players unlike last year in the top eight race. Last year this time, the names were more or less decided by the time the race was past the mid stages. The challenges from the new and young stars from China and Denmark who have stamped their class this season have been phenomenal," Srikanth, a product of the Pullela Gopichand Academy, Hyderabad, said.
Gade, the French national coach and former world champion from Denmark, said, "The Shuttle Time Dubai project which took off only last year was a huge challenge in the early months but now before another world year-end event here, this has come to have some meaning. As an ambassador for the programme where the priority is also to get the nationals into the fold, I feel there is some kind of a new energy being created for the game to grow here.
"The battles at the world front are more intense this year with the younger crop of players coming good on a more consistent basis to challenge world champ Chen Long and his Chinese colleagues," Gade added, "Denmark has to have superstars on a regular basis for the sport to grow further at home, and I am pleased with the way young Victor Axelsen and Jan O Jorgensen who are in the top four now, being serious contenders for Dubai."
The top two positions before Axelsen and Jorgensen in the current standings are occupied by Long, the winner at the Dubai finale last year and Japanese sensation Kento Momota. Srikanth lies eighth at the moment.
The women's singles category sees Wang Shixian (China), world champion Carolina Marin of Spain, Wang Yihan (China) and India's Saina Nehwal in the top four slots before the Chinese and Hong Kong opens. The Dubai stopover runs from December 8-13 at the Hamdan Sports Complex.
moni@khaleejtimes.com