In spite of being a regular choice for youngsters as a fitness regime, Badminton has never achieved the same level of popularity in India as Cricket or even football. It is true that, a game that involves team participation has its natural fan following but in recent years, an individual's game like tennis has been quite in the limelight owing to the achievements of the likes of Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza. However, apart from the legendary Prakash Padukone and Gopichand, Indian badminton players have not been able to sustain the sports lover's attention on them despite occasional flashes of brilliance. Not that is, until the arrival of Saina Nehwal.


Beginning early

Born into a badminton family in Haryana on March 17th, 1990, Saina has the initial advantage of having the game implanted in her genes. Both her father, Dr. Harvir Singh and mother Usha Rani were former State Badminton Champions in Haryana. The family being settled in Hyderabad, Saina started training for the game under Nani Prasad, the Badminton Coach at the Lal Bahadur Stadium in Hyderabad at the tender age of eight. Later in her career, Saina has trained under S.M. Arif, a Dronacharya Award winning Badminton Coach, and is now receiving Coaching at the Pullela Gopichand's Academy of Badminton at Hyderabad.

Performance at the National level

Saina already has a number of prestigious victories in her career. She became the National Junior Champion in the year 2004, and again 2005. She won the National Senior Championship in three consecutive years 2006, 2007 and 2008. Apart from these, she has won the All India Jr. Ranking Tournaments of the year 2005 held at Chennai, Cochin, Bangalore and Pune. She further won the All India Senior Ranking Tournament held at Mumbai in 2005, and became the winner at the National Games held at Guwahati.


International Performance

A major break in Saina's career came with her victory in the Junior Czech Open, which took place in the year 2003. In the next year, she reached the Quarter Final at the Cheers Asian Satellite tournament held at Singapore. At the India Satellite tournament she emerged as the winner in 2005 and 2006 and also claimed the Bingo Bonanza Philippines Open title in the year 2006. She reached the pre-quarter final round at the All England Open where she lost to World No. 3 player from China. She also reached the Quarter Final rounds at the Macau Open tournament 2007 and the Dutch Open tournament 2007. Her victory in the Chinese Taipei Grand Prix Gold tournament came in 2008.

Saina Nehwal became the first Indian woman ever to reach the Quarter Final round of the Badminton singles event at the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. She is also the first Indian to win the World Junior Badminton Championships. Saina Nehwal's most impressive performance so far has been her victory at the Indonesian Open where she defeated higher-ranked Chinese Lin Wang in Jakarta in June 2009. With this she became the first Indian to win a Super Series tournament. At the ongoing World Badminton Championship at Hyderabad, Saina suffered a straight-game loss to the same Lin Wang of (21-16, 21-19) at the quarter finals.


Saina is currently ranked at number 6 by Badminton World federation, and her aim is to be number 1 by 2010. She has also been named the most promising player of the year in 2008.