After being promoted from Div II to Div I, one would have expected OLPS (Chembur) to prepare well for their tough challlenge this season.
Saina Nehwal has only an outside chance of topping the world badminton charts this year
Can Saina Nehwal be World No 1 must be a question on every Indian badminton fan's lips after she attained No 2 status yesterday?
However, the million-dollar question is, can Saina be World 1 this year?u00a0 She has only an outside chance.
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Here's why. Firstly, Saina has only four world Super Series events left this year apart from the world championships to be held in Paris next month.
Saina will shed 6500 points going into the event since points garnered from the last world championships are deleted from the current tally before the start of the event. She gets 12,000 points if she wins the event. But the World No 1 Yihan Wang of China is on 74,308 points as against Saina's 64,791.
So with a net gain of only 5500 points if she does win, Saina is not going to narrow the gap even if Yihan does not play the championships which one is sure she will play.
In other Super Series events, we can be sure that the other two Chinese stars whom Saina is yet to defeat will also play. Yin Wang is on 63,442 points and is very close for comfort in points comparison as far as Saina is concerned.
And at fourth place, Shixian Wandg is only 7000 points adrift. So Saina has not only to win the World title but also reach finals in all remaining Super Series events to have a positive shot at the No 1 rank.
"I want to win the big events. I am not in race for points now," Saina said recently, a view echoed by coach Gopichand.
"Right now, our focus is on the Commonwealth games and Asian games apart from the world championships. It is good to be high ranked of course, but we are gunning for bigger titles. This is more important."
Unfortunately, both Commonwealth and Asian Games do not figure in the world ranking system.
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