Badminton: Rakshitha Ramraj, with a push from coach Gopichand to attack more, registers big win at Hylo Open

On Thursday, Rakshitha matched the hop-smashes of Scottish Kirsty Gilmour, beating the No 25 player 21-14, 21-12 in 36 minutes at the Hylo Open, in Saarbrucken Germany.

It will be preposterous to make a direct comparison with Sindhu who had a World Championship bronze at 18 years. But Rakshitha’s rangy game, being honed at the Gopichand Academy, is very reminiscent of Sindhu’s.

Rakshitha has a long way to go – she is still World No 75 in badminton’s women’s singles rankings. But the tall shuttler from Tamil Nadu, just 17 at the moment, holds serious potential to go very far in her career. Kirsty is a veteran of the circuit, a pugnacious player but with hugely diminishing attacking instincts right now. Still, it was Rakshitha’s poised offense that made the contest look extremely lopsided against the 31-year-old Scotswoman.

Till two months back, the Coimbatore-born teenager, was a skilled strokemaker, but a compulsive rally player. She came mighty close to causing an upset in Vietnam on the Asian swing of mid-range tournaments, but couldn’t finish in both close sets 21-18, 23-21 against upcoming Chinese Dai Wang. Coach Gopichand knew it was time to cause a little storm.

The largely defensive player, whose court coverage is finely developed, was taught to get more attacking. “Earlier she was only about rallying. But last two months Gopi Sir has worked a lot on her attack and speed. Today the way she started and her movement against Kirsty was very good. She completely dominated with her strokes and speed,” Yadav said.

It is expected of those who are catapulted from the Gopichand Academy into tougher circuit tournaments that they will be temperamentally sound, and physically sturdy. Rakshitha, guided by former promising junior Yadav now a coach at the Hyderabad academy, however, offered a peek into her ready-to-explode game on the international scene during the win against Gilmour.

First, there’s the economy of her movements. She plays a reasonably composed game from the backcourt, easily tracking back to the baseline, but equally adept at the forecourt lunges, but with a great radar for controlling energy-spending from the T. The striding is particularly confident and the shot selection is precise. Against Gilmour, she largely called the shots from the back.

With her power still developing, she’s not prone to slam-bang smashes yet, though capable of them. And she isn’t shy of trying the hop-smash, getting good distance from the back court. Rakshitha mixes the drops pretty well after pushing her opponent back. And she wrapped up the match with a stop-drop, a natural shot in her armoury.

Rakshitha trained in Coimbatore till age 11-12, but moved to Hyderabad subsequently, and is tipped as one of the new generation shuttlers to take the momentum of women’s singles forward.