On Tuesday evening, 17-year-old Anupama Upadhyaya was packing her kit bag at her home in Delhi for the North Zone Badminton Championships to be held in Jammu starting later this week when the youngster saw her name on the top spot in the world junior rankings released by BWF. The Delhi resident, who represents Haryana and trained in Panchkula for 18 months early in her career, became only the sixth Indian and second Indian female player to claim the top spot with 18.060 points in 18 tournaments in the BWF world junior ranking. “It’s a great feeling to see my name at the top of the BWF world junior rankings and this will motivate me for the senior career as well. Competing in the junior circuit means a lot for me and the coming years will be a transition period for me from junior to senior level. It will be a challenging phase for me as I need to work on my speed and court movement to excel in the senior circuit too. But this moment is special too for me and my coaches,” said Upadhyaya while speaking to The Indian Express. The Delhi youngster first started playing badminton at Yamuna Sports Complex, when her father Naveen Upadhyaya took her for training in her summer vacations from school. The youngster, whose family hails from Almora in Uttarakhand, was visiting Almora during holidays that she met coach D K Sen, father of 2021 world championship bronze medallist Lakshya Sen. The Delhi resident would then make Almora her base for the next three years training under Sen till 2018. Upadhyaya won the U-13 national singles as well as doubles’ title at Vijayawada before winning the U-15 national singles title in Orissa in 2019, from where she started concentrating on singles category only. In 2018, the youngster would also reach the pre-quarters in Asian Junior Badminton Championships in Myanmar before reaching the quarter-finals in the tournament’s next edition in 2019. The same year, the youngster would win the bronze medal in the BAI U-19 nationals. “I started playing badminton as a leisure activity and it was not before I shifted to Almora to train under DK Sen sir that I thought about playing it professionally. Whenever Lakshya Sen bhaiya would visit Almora, I would take tips from him too. In 2018, when Sen sir shifted to Bengaluru, I shifted to Panchkula for 18 months staying at a rented accommodation with my mother. Reaching the quarters in the Asian Junior Championship in 2019 was a motivating moment in my career,” said the youngster, who is ranked 63rd in world senior rankings. The last two years have seen the youngster winning the girls’ singles title in Bengaluru in 2021, where she scored a 21-19, 21-16 win over Unnati Hooda in the final apart from title wins in the Poland Open and Uganda Junior Open this year. In Poland, Upadhyaya scored a 17-21, 21-14, 21-17 win over fellow Indian Aditi Bhatt to win the title while she scored a win over Meghna Reddy to claim the title in the Uganda Junior Open. The youngster, who is a trainee of Prakash Padukone Academy in Bengaluru for the last one and a half years, now aims to make a balance between senior and junior events for some time before she turns senior. “Post-pandemic, I stayed in Delhi for some time and would focus on improving my fitness. Winning the Infosys Open title last year made me believe that my training has been going well. To win the title in Poland was a special moment. I am now aiming to do well in Nagpur International Challenge and Raipur International Challenge apart from Vietnam Open, a BWF Super 100 event. At the academy, coach Vimal Kumar sir makes us work on increasing the shuttle speed like Saina Nehwal didi and PV Sindhu didi,” said the youngster who idolises Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Tai Tzu-Ying of Chinese Taipei.
