Long cut to success: How HS Prannoy went from being the nearly-man to India’s go-to shuttler

Everyone returned from their native places a kilo or three heavier. Never HS Prannoy. Coach Gurusaidutt recalls a young Prannoy coming from Trivandrum back to Hyderabad, looking fitter and stronger each passing year. The then-teenager seemed to know how to make the best of the off-season even back then.All the minutest of efforts that Prannoy had put in over the years while not winning much in terms of championships, seemed to come together to amalgamate into the Malaysian Masters title finally last week. The Super 500 might well be the start of many more to come, given Prannoy’s calibre.“He was this thin guy, always Top 3 in India in juniors,” Guru recalls, “He wanted to do something big in life. He was clear about things, always outspoken. He would train to be strong; that made him different. When others went home from the National Centre to be with their families and saw the offseason as a downtime, this fellow would go home to return stronger than before.”Prannoy always had the flat rallies, the strength needed for longer matches, more power than anyone else and a backhand from the rear court as good as the forehand. He could boast of the clears, drives and drops from deep corners, and the ability to find winners at the end of long rallies. “Always a keen learner, he wanted to learn and experiment to improve his game.” It’s what ensured that national coach Pullela Gopichand was actively involved in his training, and told him: “Hang in there, you can do something big.”Prannoy’s career was meant for bigger things as soon as he started. Father Sunil Kumar retired after serving in the Air Force for 20 years as an engine technician and then worked at ISRO. He had friends living and travelling in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore bring back first the video cassettes and later the sleek CDs, which had recorded reels of Taufik Hidayat footage compiled shuttle diehards in South East Asia back in the pre-Youtube days.
In 2009, he was scouted out at a junior ranking meet at Kochi and invited to join the Gopichand Academy in Hyderabad.
At age 10, Prannoy was watching and learning from these Taufik videos, but there was little else available in terms of formal coaching at Trivandrum. the time he turned 25, he had beaten Taufik as well as Lin Dan and Lee Chong Wei with that backhand. Jan O Jorgensen, a former World No 2, came in for particular treatment from that backhand back in the mid and late 2010s.
Wickedly exciting, though, was his backhand variation – down the line instead of going cross – where Prannoy made the split-second calculation with planned power. It brought him the big scalps – including Chong Wei and Chen Long on back-to-back days in Indonesia in 2017. When he beat Lin Dan in Paris, it was his deep-length shots that knackered out Super Dan, who was made to work hard.
Titles, though, eluded him. Injuries and health concerns pegged him back and tethered him to disappointments after the highs of 2017. Far too often, the day after a marquee win would see him lose tamely to a lower-ranked opponent. There was the silver medal from the Youth Olympics in Singapore and a Grand Prix Gold title in Indonesia, plus the Asian Championship bronze. But super Sundays were glaringly missing from his diary. Prannoy remained undeterred – even when he narrowly missed out on a World Championship medal in 2021.

“This is just the beginning” 🥶
Here’s what Prannoy had to say after creating hory 💫#MalaysiaMasters2023#IndiaontheRise#Badminton pic.twitter.com/re8BhhTO5R
— BAI Media (@BAI_Media) May 28, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Start of a turnaround
It started last season after he lost the 2022 CWG trials post-lockdown. Though Prannoy was chipping away at all the health issues even before that. He would find solutions to gastroesophageal reflux disease, which wrecked his 2018, through a US special in 2019. While he had suffered ankle injuries, the ribs and the back, he would begin to understand his body better and seek expert help – including wearable technology for monitoring his sleep and blood sugar levels, a mental trainer and a breath-work trainer to even learn to breathe optimally.
“The whole focus was on off-court improvements, recovery processes and psychology sessions,” Prannoy says. “I adopted healthy eating habits.” He would take extensive help from a sports psycholog. “It was important to discuss issues I had, to address them and seek help so I went into matches with a positive mindset.”
He has for some time now been India No 1, with his ranking hovering around No 7 to No 9. But being No 1 also meant shouldering the toughest duties in team events, which pitted him against his Round 1 opponent in Malaysia, Chou Tien Chen, at the Sudirman Cup in Suzhou a week before he faced him at Axiata Arena in Kuala Lumpur. “In that first round against Chou, I wasn’t playing well. There were a lot of self-doubts owing to the Sudirman Cup loss. And he put me in uncomfortable situations again,” Prannoy recalls.
It was in downing the nemesis that the whole tide turned. “The whole match was a rollercoaster. Sometimes, he was in control. At times, I was in control. But when situations were not going well, I handled them better this whole tournament. I had to dig deep in the second set against Chou. But I realised if I was fit enough to play Chou, I could go all the way.”
Prannoy has been consently making semis and quarters of tournaments this last season and a half. “The win was around the corner,” Guru says. “It takes a toll if the first match you need to go deep. But once you clear a long match, it gives you immense confidence that you can face anything,” Guru says of just the sort of thing that happened in Malaysia.
Prannoy though has an X-factor, Guru reckons. “The physical aspect he’s worked a lot. But when you are training hard and competing on the circuit and have that X-factor, a win becomes inevitable,” he adds. “We firmly believe he can go well beyond Malaysia Masters and win the bigger prizes now.”
His X-factor is MS Dhoni-esque. Throughout the Thomas Cup wins, and in his new consent avatar, Prannoy has shown how once he takes the game deep – more shots in the rally, more rallies in the match – he stands a greater chance of winning. When shuttles are slow, he respects conditions rather than opponents.
It wasn’t easy to ignore that the opponent was Chou Tien Chen in his opening round match though, where a couple of points had cost him the match at Sudirman Cup just five days ago. “It’s not easy but once it came down to the match situation, he had to go deeper. He understood that at around 12/13th point in the decider, started believing in his rallies, and won that opener,” Guru recalls.
All the conversations as the tournament progressed were about strategies rather than asking him if he was exhausted. “Yes, there was the recovery happening, but at no point did Prannoy indicate that he was tiring despite the long matches.” It’s been the underlying theme of his matches – a face that gives away nothing, not the exhaustion, nor the absolute ecstasy of winning, till of course the match is won.
Quite contrary to the concerns that long matches would tire him out, the team believed that long matches were playing to his advantage. “When matches go longer, it was helping Prannoy, so all our focus was on that strategy of going deep,” Guru recalls. No talk of head-to-head or the fact that his finals opponent, Weng Hang Yong, was being called the new Lin Dan of China. “We talked about his left-handedness that’s all.”
The semifinals had seen a tragic retirement when young Chrian Adinata’s knee caved under him after a fall. “That affected us a lot. But on finals day it was about finding the rhythm and being mentally ready for the left-hander.” As it turned out, Weng was getting tired, especially when pushed to his deep backhand rear-court. At 5-8 in the third, Prannoy would change gears – just like Dhoni takes it deep and then accelerates. Taking the lead at 11-10 was crucial, but post point 15, Prannoy upturned his game and completely pushed the pace and took chances instead of going deep into long rallies. He would dominate mixing shots from the net – and get the better of dribbles.
“He was literally enjoying the match this point in time, and playing freely.” Having contested two semis and 1 quarters in Malaysia in the last four editions at the Axiata, he would master the conditions. Prannoy would also play a few new strokes – attacking drops from the back of the court and a couple of cross nets.

CHAMPIONNNN!!!!!!
#MalaysiaMaster2023 Champion – feels surreal to say it.
It wouldn’t have been possible without the coaches, experts, and my support system. Thank you Gopi bhaiya for all the guidance over the years. Thank you @Media_SAI @BAI_Media @GoSportsVoices pic.twitter.com/xAdUyAcpxX
— PRANNOY HS (@PRANNOYHSPRI) May 29, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Lean run
Friend and senior Parupalli Kashyap has lost 7 semifinals in Super Series and says he knows how tough it can be to believe that you can cross the threshold after so many setbacks. “Besides the World Championship medal miss, there was that time when he came within a whisker of Commonwealth Games bronze against Rajeev Ouseph. And there was the French Open where he led Srikanth in the third, but couldn’t go the dance,” Kashyap says of the umpteen times that Prannoy ended on the wrong side of the result. He had to wait a season too many for his Arjuna Award also.
It was especially disheartening given how his batchmates struck success early, while he was the nearly-there man amongst contemporaries Kidambi Srikanth (won China Open at 21) and B Sai Praneeth (won World Championship bronze). “He’s said recently how it was important to stop comparing himself with others’ achievements. But it must’ve been very difficult when younger to digest others’ going on to win titles, while he was coming close but not winning.”
The first time Kashyap saw Prannoy he had reckoned this was a physically strong specimen, hugely talented with all the shots and no apparent weaknesses in his game. He had looked Top-20 material even as a junior. But he had taken an almost serendipitous route to cracking the Top 10 earlier this year after many tws and turns. “When you are so invested in finding solutions to issues when you keep playing semis and quarters consently, things are bound to fall into place at some point,” Kashyap says.
The sound of things falling in place has been sweet. And Prannoy is almost in a zone of sorts currently, where no one has managed to beat him in a thumping fashion. “It’s when mentally you are so confident that even if you lose the first set, you know you will come back. It’s when Plan Bs are working. And no one can outplay you. His average level of playing is high on any given day.” Almost everyone has struggled to play Viktor Axelsen; not Prannoy who has two wins against him in the last two times they’ve faced off against each other – at the Indonesia Masters in 2021 and the World Tour Finals in 2022.
“The biggest thing is he loves the sport. You can only come back from so many setbacks if you love the sport this much. He can become a real good coach in some years’ time because he reads the game so well and understands training methods,” Kashyap adds. “He’s a classic example of losing so many matches, but hanging in there to come back and win. The barrier is broken. The way he’s playing, if he stays injury free, there’s a lot more to follow,” Kashyap ends.