Haldia shuttler eyes global glory

HALDIA: A frail yet athletic girl from Haldia took Bengal to the centrestage of international badminton on Monday evening, when she faced her Finnish rival Airi Mikkela in the first round of the World Badminton Championship in London. Even as 20-year-old Rituparna Das, the reigning senior national women’s champion, took the court in her quest for glory, her anxious parents held their breath, frequently checking their phones for WhatsApp updates on the match which was not telecast on TV.

It’s been a long journey for the Haldia girl who is now based in Hyderabad and plays for Telengana. She started playing at the age of six at the local club. Even though

Rituparna

took up the sport purely as a hobby, she showed enough early promise for her club to arrange for coaches from Kolkata, said her father Mahananda Das, a senior operator of

IOC

. “The coaching made a difference to her game. Rituparna didn’t look back after that,” said Das.

Her performance drew the attention of former badminton ace and coach P Gopichand, who got in touch with her parents and requested them to send her to his academy in Hyderabad. But Rituparna’s parents were wary and turned the offer down. Two years later, they finally relented. “We felt she was too young to be able to be on her own then. Gopichand felt it was a mistake,” said her father.

Training at the Hyderabad academy changed Rituparna’s life forever. Even as her father stayed back in Haldia, Rituparna shifted base to the southern city along with her mother and elder sister. “At the academy, she starts training at 4am and it continues till early evening. It has paid her rich dividends, though. She has improved by leaps and bounds and today she is a part of the national team, competing with the best in the world” said her mother Ananya.

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