Hyderabad: 2019 has been a rather forgettable year for Indian badminton. Apart from PV Sindhu's World Championship title India hardly saw any laurel coming in their way. Now, Sindhu has become the only Indian to qualify for this year's Tour Finals. The top eight performers in a calendar year made it to the season-ender event which is scheduled to take place in Guangzhou from December 11.
Sindhu would have missed the cut by a huge margin had she not won the world title in women's singles in Basel, Switzerland in August. Though Sindhu automatically qualified for the Tour Finals, thanks to her world title, she failed to impress in other events.
Sindhu, who is ranked No. 15 in the World Tour ranking, is the only player among the 40 participants who ranked outside top-9 in the tour rankings.
Before Sindhu's world crown Saina Nehwal's Indonesia Masters title in January was the only singles titles India had won. In the men's doubles, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty showed great zeal to excel in big-ticket tournaments winning the Thailand Open in July but skipped many tournaments due to injuries. Hence, they failed to improve their world ranking.
Currently, Saina is ranked No. 23 in the World Tour which showed how poorly Indians performed throughout the year. In the men's singles, Parupalli Kashyap was the top-ranked Indian at No. 16, ahead of Sai Praneeth (No.17) and Kidambi Srikanth (No.18).
