The Premier Badminton League(PBL) kicks off in Mumbai later this evening and one man, for whom this tournament assumes a bit more significance than some of the others is World No. 15 Parupalli Kashyap.
The 29-year-old, who will be making a comeback into the sport in this competition, after a gap of over 2 months, will represent the Hyderabad Hunters and in an interview to the Times of India, expressed happiness to be part of his home team and gave a thumbs-up for the tournament, in general.
“Yeah I'm very happy to be a part of Hyderabad team because I belong to the same state and it will be very exciting for me as I will get lot of support from the local people.
“It's good that there are lot of top players playing the tournament and I'm very happy. PBL will help me because unless the competition is there you don't know where you stand. This is a good kind of competition where Olympic qualification, rankings points and all these things are not in our mind and we can directly approach matches in a different way. It's a good thing that whole team is with you and lot of people cheering for you,” the shuttler said.
The PBL will see the introduction of a new rule called the ‘Trump Match’ and when asked about his thoughts over the rule, Kashyap said that it would ensure that almost every match goes down to the wire and added that teams will have to carefully select the ‘Trump Match’.
“It's going to be really exciting how the team use the trump card, it becomes very interesting thing as the competition is not over until the last match. If you are leading 3-0, still the rival team has an opportunity to win the match so the trump card is kind of an important thing and it lot depends on how the team utilizes it. The team meetings would be more interesting now.” the 2014 Commonwealth Games Gold medalist said.
Watch out for Siril and Satwik: Kashyap
Along with himself and former World No.1 Lee Chong Wei, the team also have a few upcoming youngsters and Kashyap felt that it was a fantastic opportunity for them to learn from some of the established players in the squad.
“Yeah, there are so many youngsters also in our team, especially I would mention Siril (Verma) and Satwik (Sai Raj) these are two players to watch and look out for in the future. Siril played world junior championship final and Satwik is very good doubles player and in a few years time you will listen more about his name and he is very good for his age, so it will be the super learning experience for these two shuttlers. You have former world number one singles player in the team and you have the best doubles player in the tournament so standard of tournament is quite high,” he concluded.
