Srikanth Nammalwar Kidambi, born on 7 February 1993 in Ravulapalem, Andhra Pradesh, is one of India’s most successful badminton players. He represented India at the 2016 Rio Olympics, finishing fifth after a run to the quarter-finals, and in April 2018 became the first Indian man to reach the world No. 1 ranking since Prakash Padukone. In 2021 he became the first Indian man to reach the final of the BWF World Championships, winning silver, and in 2022 he captained India’s first Thomas Cup-winning team.
He was born into a Telugu family. His father, K. V. S. Krishna, is a landlord, and his mother, Radha, is a housewife. His older brother, K. Nandagopal, is also a badminton player and a junior national champion. The brothers lived in the same house until 2008, when Srikanth moved to the Gopichand Academy to continue his training. In 2011, at the Commonwealth Youth Games in the Isle of Man, he won bronze in men’s doubles and silver in mixed doubles, and he won singles and doubles titles at the All India Junior International Championship in Pune.
His senior breakthrough came in 2013, when he won the Thailand Open Grand Prix Gold by beating the local favourite Boonsak Ponsana in straight games and then took his first senior national title by beating the reigning champion Parupalli Kashyap. In November 2014 he caused a major upset in the final of the China Open Super Series Premier, beating the five-time world champion and two-time Olympic champion Lin Dan 21–19, 21–17 and becoming the first Indian to win a Super Series Premier men’s title. In 2015 he won the Swiss Open Grand Prix Gold by defeating Viktor Axelsen and also won the India Open Super Series.
At the 2016 Rio Olympics he beat Lino Munoz and Henri Hurskainen and then the world No. 5, Jan O. Jorgensen, 21–19, 21–19, before losing the quarter-final to Lin Dan in three games. He also won two gold medals at the 2016 South Asian Games, in the men’s team event and in singles, and the Syed Modi International Grand Prix Gold title earlier that year.
His best year was 2017. He and Sai Praneeth became the first Indian pair to meet in the final of a Super Series event, at the Singapore Open, which Sai Praneeth won. Srikanth then won the Indonesia Open Super Series, beating Kazumasa Sakai, and the Australian Super Series, beating Chen Long 22–20, 21–16. He added the Denmark Open, defeating Lee Hyun-il 21–10, 21–5, and the French Open, beating Kenta Nishimoto 21–14, 21–13, which made him the fourth player to win four Super Series titles in a year, after Lee Chong Wei, Lin Dan and Chen Long. He reached a career-best world ranking of 2 in 2017.
In 2018 he achieved the world No. 1 ranking for a week. At the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, he won gold in the mixed team event and silver in the singles. The year was otherwise difficult: he lost early at the India Open and the All England Open and at the Asian Games, where his team went out in the quarter-finals to Indonesia. He won gold in the team event at the 2019 South Asian Games in Nepal.
His 2021 silver at the World Championships, where he lost the final to Singapore’s Loh Kean Yew, was a first for an Indian man. In 2022 he led the Thomas Cup team that gave India its first title in the tournament. Coached at the Gopichand Academy in Hyderabad, he is among the few Indian men to have beaten Lin Dan, Chen Long and Viktor Axelsen, and his 2017 season remains a high-water mark for Indian men’s badminton.
Featured image: Kidambi Srikanth with coach Pullela Gopichand calling on Minister of State for Sports Vijay Goel in New Delhi, July 2017 (file photo). Photo by Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, licensed under Government Open Data License – India, via Wikimedia Commons.
