Viktor Axelsen. Akane Yamaguchi. Carolina Marin. Lee Zii Jia. Nozomi Okuhara. Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan. Kento Momota. Zheng Si Wei and Huang Ya Qiong. Anthony Sinisuka Ginting.
These are just some of the names that will be in New Delhi for the 2023 India Open starting on Tuesday.
Of course, India Open has been traditionally the biggest BWF World Tour event in the country. But this time – as the organisers are promoting on social media –it is #BiggerThanEver.
Simply put, the best among world’s badminton are going to be competing for the year’s second World Tour event, following Super 1000 in Malaysia last week (also promoted from Super 750 earlier).
India Open was a Super 500 in the recent years and that meant that attracting top talents hasn’t always been easy, given that level of tournament is not mandatory. We have see Axelsen win a title twice, and this writer was present in 2017 when the Delhi crowd threw their adulation at him with chants of “Viktor bhai”. That was also the day, PV Sindhu had a rematch against Carolina Marin not long after their Olympic Games final, with the Indian winning the title this time around.
The strong Indian presence at this event is a…
