Mumbai: The Maharashtra Badminton Association felicitated PV Sindhu, the silver medallist from the Rio Olympics and her coach Pulela Gopichand in Mumbai today. The felicitation ceremony was attended by Hon’ble Chief Minister of Maharashtra Shri Devendra Fadnavis, Hon’ble Sports Minister of Maharashtra Shri. Vinod Tawde,

Sindhu has won two bronze medals at World Championships in the past. She became the first Indian shuttler in Indian history to win Silver at the Olympics. Against all odds, PV Sindhu made it to the finals of the Women’s Singles Final, before bowing out to the Spaniard Carolina Marin.

President of the Maharashtra Association, Mr. Arun Lakhani said, “We have extremely talented players, we have great badminton minds/ coaches, what we need is strong support on infrastructure which fortunately is also there. We need to connect these dots and come together for the Sport, and I can assure you that within 2 years we can see a fresh new beginning for the players blossoming out of these facilities.

Mr. Lakhani further said, “I have recently taken up the responsibility to lead MBA and am trying to focus on infrastructure development and use of technology and increasing communication/interaction with all stakeholders. We recently launched player friendly software for tournament & calendar planning. We already have over 4000 players registered and we expect it to go to 10,000 by year end.”

Mr. Arun Lakhani took over the reins of the Maharashtra Badminton Association in October 2015. Since then, the Maharashtra Badminton Association has been aggressively working towards putting together a robust grassroot development program and local tournaments to indentify and hone young shuttlers from a very young age.