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What's the story?
Indian badminton starlet, Kidambi Srikanth, who is currently ranked as high as World No 2, took to Instagram to give a hint that he might be missing Hong Kong Open Superseries, which is starting from November 21, due to a knee injury.
Incidentally he ruled himself out of China Open, which commences on November 14, due to that same problem.
In case you didn’t know
The talented shuttler from Guntur has been playing non-stop for sometime now, and that has impacted his knee to some extent. He recently won the French Open title which was his fourth of the year, having entered five finals. The other victories came in the Superseries events in Indonesia, Australia and Denmark.
Heart of the matter
Srikanth was feeling some uneasiness while playing the French Open, but was pressurised into playing in the Indian Nationals in Nagpur, a tournament in which all the icon players of the country participated for the first time in the last decade. He struggled to win against upcoming shuttlers like Shubham Prajapati and Lakshya Sen and finally lost to HS Prannoy in the final.
It is due to this excessive amount of minutes spent on court that took a toll on Srikanth’s knee with which he was already having a problem. Therefore he chose the safer option and ruled himself out of China Open.
What’s next?
In all probabilities, Srikanth will also miss the Hong Kong Open which will help him to recuperate, ahead of the Dubai World Super Series Finals.
To add to that, Srikanth, who is currently occupying the World No 2 spot in the BWF men's singles rankings, could be in serious danger of losing out on the opportunity to become World No 1 by the end of the
Author’s take
While the Indian badminton star has one eye on the No 1 ranking, he has taken a wise decision to not play in a couple of tournaments, ahead of the Dubai Super Series Finals next month.
A player does need good amount of rest in between big events and when the competition is so tough the shuttlers can’t afford to play on with injuries. Sense has prevailed and this break will help Srikanth to bounce back stronger.
