New Delhi, May 16

The lack of competitions before the Olympics is a major concern for Indian shuttlers but not so much for PV Sindhu, who trusts her South Korean coach Park Tae Sang to create match situations for her in training itself.

Owing to the raging Covid-19 pandemic, the Badminton World Federation has been forced to cancel the remaining three Olympics qualifiers in India, Malaysia and Singapore. These were to be the last events before the Tokyo Games in July-August.

Asked if cancellations will affect her preparations, Sindhu said: “Well, we were thinking that Singapore will be the last event before Olympics but now we don’t have another option, so I am playing matches against different players and my coach Park is trying to create match situations for me in training.”

“Different players have different styles like Tai Tzu (Ying) or Ratchanok (Intanon) have different styles of play but Park is there to guide me, to prepare me for it. Obviously, we will be playing each other after a few months and there will be something new in our games, so I will have to prepare for that,” she added.

Sindhu doesn’t train with the rest of the Indian Olympics-bound team. She has been training at the Gachibowli indoor stadium in Telangana.

The 25-year-old endorsed BWF’s decision to cancel the events. “It is sad that the whole world has come to a standstill but before sportspersons we are human beings and life comes first,” Sindhu said.

“If tournaments happen, we don’t know if we will be safe, we might think we will be but we can’t be sure because we don’t know from where this virus will come. For the moment, events are being cancelled and I know sportspersons are sad but I think it is good for the people... Organisers take a lot of measures and keep us in a bubble but still we need to be careful,” she added.

Earlier this year, a few false positives forced some of the top players, including Saina Nehwal and B Sai Praneeth, to withdraw from international events. Sindhu hoped that such instances do not happen during the Olympics. — PTI