Gopi Chand ready for big time

When the year began, Gopi Chand, who hit the headlines when in the early half of 1997 he made the finals of the Indian Open, where the field was truly world class. And when this year began he was in the 30s in world ranking. Then came the knee injury, which not only put him quite a fewsteps back but even threatened his career. “It was a bad time. I am lucky to have come out of it,” says Gopi who was operated upon by Dr Ashok Rajagopal in Delhi. He missed out on a whole lot of tournaments and slipped down the rankings, so much so he is now No 67 in the world. “I was to play in the Brunei Open and some other tournaments, but then Prakash Sir felt I was short on training, and there was the Commonwealth Games and the Asian games coming up this year end,” he says.

“The next few months are going to be crucial,” says Gopi Chand, as he packs his bag after yet another fairly easy win in the Commonwealth Games. It has been fairly smooth sailing for the Indian ace at these Games, for the match that he thought would be his biggest test was never completed.

Malaysian Ong Ewe Hock, the number one seed here, injured himself badly while going for an impossible shot in the team event against Gopi and retired.

“At this stage I am quite happy with the way I am progressing,” says Gopi. “I havebeen concentrating on my fitness and I feel I am almost back to peak fitness.” So what next? “What I now need is match practice and lots of it. Remember I missed so much time in the last six months and I have trained quite hard and now I need to play,” he adds.

Prakash Padukone, at whose BPL Academy Gopi Chand trains, feels the 22-year-old Hyderabad player is capable of making it big. “He should be playing in the German league and there in two to three months he will get lots of matches,” says Padukone.

Gopi will playing for FC Langenfeld and the club will take care of stay, local travel tournament play and so on. “I won’t be paid to turn out for the club, though many leading English players like Simon Archer and many Swedish and Danish players do get paid. The reason I am going is I will get to play a lot and the club is going to sponsor me for the Dutch and Danish Open tournaments also,” adds Gopi.

On whether there are any specific areas he wishes to improve, Gopi says, “My attack is mystrength and if I can tighten my defence more, it will help.” He knows he can be part of the elite in the game. He has it all and all he now needs is to put it together.