Simran Singhi fought through setbacks to reach the World Championships. Now she wants to prove she belongs

The next step: Simran Singhi has fought through career doubts, partnership changes and financial pressures to earn her place at the World Championships. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Playing at the World Championships is one of the biggest career moments for any sportsperson. Simran Singhi will have more than a few supportive faces in the stands at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Stadium on Monday evening when she steps out on court to make her Badminton World Championships debut. “It’s incredible to make my World Championships debut, and it’s even more special that it’s happening in India. My mother will be there, and half of my family is from New Delhi so they will be there as well. Everyone is really excited to see me play,” the 24-year-old tells Sportstar.

There’s one face Simran will be missing, though. That will be Manoj Ramachandran, one of her biggest childhood mentors, who passed away last year. “Manoj uncle was like a second father to me. When I was a kid, he used to accompany me to training and competitions. He was always really supportive of me. He would have been so happy to see me compete at a World Championships. I know he would be so proud of me,” she says.

Simply making it to the World Championships is a career-defining moment for Simran. “If you ask any player, they’ll tell you the same thing. Sab ko toh at least ek baar World Championships khelna hai (Everyone wants to play at the world level at least once). Every player has this dream, but there are times when you wonder if it will be possible or if it’s just something that happens to other people,” says Simran, who will partner Kavipriya Selvam in the women’s doubles against the Spanish pair of Nikol Carulla and Carmen Jimenez, ranked 69th in the world.

Growing up, this hadn’t been something she’d thought about. Simran had grown up in the same Mumbai neighbourhood as international player and USA coach Shlok Ramachandran and India’s top men’s doubles player Chirag Shetty. She studied at the same school, Ryan International, and was a member of the same sports club, Goregaon Sports Club. Yet she came into badminton by chance.

The man behind the journey: Simran Singhi with Manoj Ramachandran, her childhood mentor and a family friend who played a key role in getting her started in badminton. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

“I’m from a Marwari family. There was no idea about sport. But one day during my summer vacations, my mother took me to a summer sports camp at Goregaon Sports Club. At that time, both Shlok bhaiya and Chirag bhaiya were already training at the Uday Pawar Academy there. Shlok’s father was Manoj uncle, and he suggested that I also start training there,” she recalls.

Simran slowly developed an interest in the sport, and Manoj, already a family friend, made sure her enthusiasm didn’t flag. “He would accompany me to the ground for practice, and he would also travel with me for competitions,” she recalls.

At that early age, Simran appeared a top prospect as a singles player. “I won the National Under-13 championships three years in a row,” she says.

Her form slowly faded, though. As top players from the Uday Pawar academy left to train at the prestigious Gopichand academy in Hyderabad, Simran found herself with fewer partners and fewer options. Moving to another city and living in a hostel was not an option. Instead, she shifted her training base to an academy in Thane.

“It was 1.5 hours from my house. That meant four or five hours of travelling each day. On top of that, I was still in school and having to balance my studies. All that affected my performance,” she says. As the losses mounted, so did the doubts.

“I gave up on singles too easily. Maybe I could have tried harder to move to a different academy and city, but at that time in my life I’m not sure I could have done that,” she admits.

It was around this period that doubles offered Simran a new route. She’d been partners with Ritika Thaker since the U-13 level, and the two started winning domestic tournaments, eventually claiming the junior nationals in 2019. Three years later, they made the Indian senior squad for the Uber Cup.

Although she had finally made an Indian international team, Simran felt the partnership had stopped progressing. “We had been partners from U-13 onwards. It felt strange to walk away from it,” she says.

Taking a risk

She spoke to World Championships doubles medallist Ashwini Ponnappa, who gave her a blunt piece of advice. “She told me, ‘you can’t spend your whole life making everyone happy. Eventually you are going to have to take a decision even if it’s not the easy one’,” she says.

Simran agreed. “I was not happy being an average player. But if you want to take risks, you have to take your decisions,” she says.

The partnership ended in 2024, and Simran was without a partner for two months. Then Kavipriya approached her. “Let’s try for two tournaments. If it works out, we’ll continue,” Kavipriya told her.

It did.

The partnership has given Simran something she had been searching for years: the feeling that she is still improving. There were two quarterfinal finishes at the Guwahati Open and Odisha Open last year. This year at the India Open, the two ran Worlds silver medallists Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan close in the first game of their opening-round match before eventually going down in straight games.

“We had fought back to nearly level the first game at 19-17 all in the opening game. It would have been great for our self-belief if we had taken that game, but I could feel that we were improving,” she says.

The World Championships is the latest reward for that progress. But getting here has involved another, less visible battle: paying for it.

Financial woes

Simran has spent much of her career outside the very top tier of India’s badminton system, where players receive greater institutional support. Below that level, she says, the economics can become a test of whether a player is willing to continue.

“At some point it becomes a battle of wills over whether you are willing to stick it out. Whatever has come into my account in terms of salary or even prize money has gone out almost simultaneously when I have to pay for my training or my flight tickets,” she says.

There are flights to book, hotels to pay for, tournament expenses and shuttlecocks to buy. “A box of shuttles costs around Rs 3,000, and as a pair, Kavi and I go through two or three boxes a week,” she says. She and Kavipriya have moved from Hyderabad to Nagpur, where they now train under former national coach Arun Vishnu. That brings further expenses in coaching fees and accommodation. Even taking a coach to an international tournament brings another cost. “If you want to bring a coach, then just the accreditation costs 200 USD. You end up playing without someone in your corner,” she says.

She’s had to cut costs even at the World Championships. She has made her own arrangements, taking a late-night flight and staying at an Airbnb rather than the team hotel.

Her sponsorship support has also fluctuated. She had ONGC backing from 2013, when she became U-13 champion, until 2021. A long-term private sponsor withdrew support last year. Her school, Ryan International, has helped fund some tournaments, while Goregaon Sports Club has also supported her at various points. She joined the State Bank of India last year. But the expenses remain.

“I’m mostly managing on my own. Whatever I’ve earned, that’s what I’m spending. I won a silver medal at the 2024 national games, and I was awarded Rs. 10 lakh by the Maharashtra government for that. All of it has gone back into the sport,” she says. “There are months I’ll look into my account, and it’s on the verge of going negative. Badminton’s an expensive sport. I would not recommend playing if you aren’t in that top group,” she says. “At 24, how much do you ask your parents to support you?”

There are days when the pressure to perform can become crushing. But Simran says she tries to keep her focus on badminton and on proving that she and Kavipriya can climb higher.

The pair, currently ranked 42nd in the world, knows it sill has work to do. Simran believes they need to become fitter and more consistent, particularly against the best Asian pairs. “We are handling the rallies, but we are getting tired. For the top Chinese and Koreans, the same pace is like a warm-up,” she says.

The target at the World Championships, she says, is to show that they’ve come closer to the best in the world. “We don’t want to show up at the worlds. We also need to perform and gain confidence. We can’t be scared of who we are playing,” she says.

The ambition now extends beyond the World Championships. The Asian Games is a dream. So is the Olympics, a dream she has carried for years.

But first comes Delhi. After years of wondering whether she would get to play at the highest level, simply walking into the Indira Gandhi Stadium will be an achievement.

“I feel I’ll be making a lot of people proud. But I want to prove I belong at this level,” she says.