Pullella Gopichand claims he never intended to neglect Saina Nehwal

Former badminton player and current coach Pullella Gopichand is not known for showing his emotions, but he revealed that he was hurt when his protege Saina Nehwal left his academy to join Prakash Padukone’s facility.

Gopichand also raised the question about why the legendary Padukone, India’s first badminton superstar never had anything positive to say about him. In an upcoming book ‘Dreams of a Billion: India and the Olympic Games’, the former All-England champion and national head coach Gopichand spoke about the difficult times, also corroborated by Saina’s husband and former CWG gold medallist Parupalli Kashyap.

In the book’s chapter, which was titled Bitter Rivalry, he revealed how miserable he felt when Saina decided to join Padukone’s academy to train under Vimal Kumar in Bengaluru after 2014 World Championship.

“It was as if something very dear was being taken away from me. Earlier, I had literally begged her (Saina) not to go. But by then she had been influenced by others and had already made up her mind. While I didn’t want to hold her back and stall her progress, I knew this was something that wasn’t beneficial for either of us,” he wrote in the book.

On the other hand,  Saina believed that Gopichand was focussing more on PV Sindhu.

“Yes, I indeed had other players to look after and Sindhu had made serious progress in the two years between 2012 and 2014. But I had never intended to neglect Saina. Maybe I wasn’t able to convey this to her,” Gopichand said.

However, hat hurt him more was the role he felt that Padukone, Vimal or Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ) official and former Olympian Viren Rasquinha could have played.

“Maybe Viren or Vimal or Prakash sir could have spoken to her. I don’t know why they didn’t. In fact, they encouraged her to leave Hyderabad. It is a mystery to me why Prakash sir has never said anything positive about me while I have always looked up to him as my role model,” he concluded.