Kusumm Singh loved her brief time playing the senior and junior Nationals so much that she culled out snippety stories of merely facing the big names in Indian badminton, from her memory. She would narrate her tryst with her illustrious juniors Saina Nehwal and Ashwini Ponnappa, who went much further in the game than she did.
In each tale, told with relish to her badminton trainees, she would caricature herself as the bumbling, clueless opponent, swatted aside in an early round by the grand heroines. In every story, she would lurk courtside, observe their stroke-play once a year at the winter nationals, walk with a bounce when they won titles on TV, and keep falling in love with the sport replaying the few snatches of her match, and how it felt to be in the presence of a shuttle superstar.
She never spoke to any of them, too shy because she came from Googariya village in Behror tahsil of Alwar district in Rajasthan – a dot hamlet of non-badminton heritage. And far away from the sport’s hubs of Hyderabad and Bangalore where the stars were being raised.
“Coach, do Saina Nehwal and Ashwini Ponnappa know you?” Kusumm got asked repeatedly by bratty students.
She would beam wide and reply: “No. But I know them.”
So, do Nehwal and Ponappa know Kusumm Singh? They just might, pretty soon. The 35-year-old has coached Indian badminton’s latest sensation, Anmol Kharb at her academy in Noida, a time in which the 17-year-old became national champion. And this last week, helped India make finals of the Badminton Asia Team Championships, winning the crucial fifth rubber against Japan in the semifinal against a top 30 player in Natsuki Nidaira.
Anmol is nowhere near the finished product that the international circuit demands. But Kusumm has spent hours and days and holidays drilling consistency, accuracy, court coverage, and variety into Anmol’s game. Teaching her every trick from the NIS manuals she read and every observation she committed to memory watching Nehwal and Ponappa play. Kusumm moved from playing to coaching at age 23, opposed by regional director for being too young.
She is painfully aware of not growing up in the traditional badminton ecosystem. Kusumm knew nothing about tournaments like the Olympics or All England till her mid-20s. There was no dream to fall back on, or look forward to. Just simple love of badminton, nurtured by a father, a Chemistry lecturer at the nearest tehsil college. She started in Class 9 and was the district champion in a year. Her entire early badminton was outdoors.
Drift in A/C stadia? Kusumm laughs. “At our village in Rajasthan, there are very strong sand winds. In the summers once, the shuttle flew up to a fourth floor of a nearby under-construction building. Fetching it was fitness.” Shuttle-control and stroke discipline came from simply keeping the shuttle within sight.
Anmol Kharb (left) with her coach Kusumm Singh at her academy in Noida.
An early coach at her first training facility wouldn’t coach girls, and instructions were relayed through seniors, while coaches sat around tables chatting, waiting for official working hours to finish.
At a national meet, a coach pointed to Saina and asked her, “Pata hai Kusumm, ye kaun hai?” The tone of the question sounded suspiciously as if it was some distant cousin from the large extended family. “I’ll easily beat her,” Kusumm would tell the coach, who sat rollicking with wicked uncontained laughter as she struggled to take even two points off her. “Later someone told me she was the new national champion! I was miffed my coach had had a good laugh at my expense.”
Against Ashwini Ponnappa, another highly touted junior in singles back then, Kusumm had an even more hilarious tale to tell. “It must’ve been 2009, and I had never played at an indoor hall taller than 22 feet,” she recalls. The tournament arena was 35 feet high, and just trying to hit Ashwini’s tossed serve staring at the ceiling, drove her dizzy. “Main aage, shuttle peechhe.” She regained her composure, but the first few stumbles and back pedals in even connecting with the high serve, bring her immense merriment.
Before Anmol embarked to Malaysia, Kusumm would repeat that the teen had much to learn and should absorb everything possible from Sindhu and Ashwini. What she did teach Anmol was to never get star-struck and always assess her level compared to the top names. The duo spent hours analysing strokes of Indian players and shuttle behaviour, though she’s still not too familiar with international names.
Yet, she devises improvised training routines for Anmol, stressing on shuttle trajectories and racquet control. She knows there’s talent, but she’s impressed upon Anmol that all shuttlers are workhorses, and there’s little to gain from indulging in flashy strokes, and plenty from merely being basic, consistent, and accurate.
Kusumm’s father would encourage her dream and she would eventually wind up jointly running the Sunrise Academy at Noida. She understands Anmol and her restless thirst for badminton knowledge intuitively, and the bond is easy-going. On her birthday eve this January, Anmol called her up from Delhi’s India Open, quizzing her why she hadn’t sent a birthday gift. Before she could say anything, Anmol had told her she had chosen a T-Shirt at a sports gear stall, and to keep money ready. “It was a cheap T-shirt, nothing special. But she was determined to extract the gift out of me because birthdays mean gifts.”
Their conversations are a hoot, but had she known Nehwal personally as a peer, they’d have gotten along famously, Kusumm reckons. “But Saina was somewhere else, and I was somewhere else in our competitive levels,” she says. Her best ward, Anmol Kharb though, is exactly on the path on which she ought to be – the one that Kusumm Singh never traversed, but paved for the youngster expertly.
Coach Kusumm Singh applying tilak on her ward Anmol Kharb. 
Anmol Kharb (left) with her coach Kusumm Singh at her academy in Noida. 
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