How Pramod Bhagat made a comeback

After a gruelling ban, the badminton star returns with a record-breaking victory in Bahrain

- Shail Desai

Pramod Bhagat at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.

(GETTY IMAGES)

A Paralympic gold. Multiple World Championship titles. Two gold medals at the Asian Para Games. The World No.1 crown. Pramod Bhagat had seen it all.

Yet, September 2025 had something different in store for the Indian shuttler. He was playing his first tournament after serving out an 18-month ban for breaching anti-doping regulations. Making the final of the China Para Badminton International may have been satisfactory on another day, but Bhagat was looking to prove a point. To himself. To reclaim his place among the best.

Only now, he had lost the first game to Indonesia’s Muhammad Al Imran—around 15 years his junior, who had debuted on the international circuit months earlier. There were doubts and questions alike, in his abilities and whether world badminton had sped past him while he sat despondent on the sidelines. And if he was still as good at 37 years.

In that moment, his mind raced back to the mountains in Ladakh. An environment he had recently discovered, where he had learned how to look past the difficult moments in life by embracing the tranquillity around him and simply slowing things down.

“The mountains taught me to be calm in difficult moments. I realised that I was engaging my opponent in shorter rallies and making it really easy for him. So I decided to extend the rallies and slow down the pace of the game,” Bhagat recalls.