How Sindhu Regained Her Balance!

How Sindhu regained her balance, and in winning the China Open, breached a great wall of excellence.

- Qaiser Mohammad Ali

In sports, balance is key to everything a sports person does. And India’s ‘golden’ girl, P.V. Sindhu, has just str uck the right balance after a slight drop in focus. She reached a giddy high when she muscled her way through the elite line-up at the Rio Olympics, storming into the final, fighting to the last and winning silver. Then, predictably, a series of felicitations followed, as Sindhu zipped across the country accepting gifts in cash and kind from politicians and industrialists bent on benevolence and from grateful fans. In the process, Sindhu’s training schedule slowed down longer than she would have wished for. Possibly, her fitness also was a bit compromised. She skipped a couple of tournaments after the Olympics and lost in the second rounds of the Denmark Open and French Open in October.

Soon, tongues started wagging, doubts were raised, questions asked, even though they were largely in whispers: Has Sindhu lost her focus? Is she distracted? When will she be able to regain that stellar concentration she showed in Rio?