Coach Vimal Kumar deserves more credit, he’s been a rock solid guide for star players

But even shorter memories failed the deliberately disrespecting ones. For Vimal Kumar had been sitting right there in the coach’s chair, when Lakshya Sen too made All England finals in 2022. A tall figure, forever threatening to leap forward and show his player, how they needed to adjust to shuttle lengths of opponents, the coach ought to have been easily recognisable. Tall, but not called ‘towering’, because his players didn’t go on to win those titles.

The wrangling prior to Paris, was petty. Like all such snarky, mousey snickerings before a big Games, tend to be. It questioned why a certain number of badminton coaches deserved an accommodation allocation in the Games Village. Even a celebrated name like Prakash Padukone was put on this ‘why’ list of litanies. The ‘Vimal who?’ disdain, wasn’t far behind, even if he was the original coach who took Lakshya Sen right up to an unprecedented semifinals.

With various sporting federations staking claim on precious temporary real estate for support staff during the Paris Games, this was a routine ruckus. Still, India’s Thomas Cup championship, where he was coaching, had only been two seasons ago. Even if you forgot that it was the same figure, who took a punt on fielding Saina Nehwal in a Commonwealth Games crucial team tie as national coach, back in 2006 and launched the catapult for the teen and took Indian badminton into the next orbit.

Forgotten figure for some

Vimal Kumar tends to be the forgotten figure when popcorn crunchers pit Pullela Gopichand (by extension, Hyderabad) against Prakash Padukone (by extension, Bangalore). He’s no side-figure or assistant either, but the guiding coach, a player-maker in his own right, even if he has helmed day-to-day coaching at the Padukone centre.

It was him that Saina Nehwal approached trying to sort out her World Championship quarterfinals voodoo. A silver and bronze, no mean achievements at 25 and 27 followed. The rivalry for undivided attention of the coach, with PV Sindhu, might’ve put her on that train to Bangalore. But it was Vimal Kumar who plotted her resurgence, channeling her ambition, to wrest those elusive medals.

Sen was spotted by Padukone. But driving his career – keeping him sharp and deeply in love with badminton from pre-teens to a very challenging junior transition and a World Championship bronze, an All England final, CWG title and Thomas Cup lead singles, was entirely mapped out by Vimal. There wasn’t any dearth of funds, but cracking the Top 10 needs core badminton expertise — devising strategies and getting your athlete to execute — and money alone couldn’t buy all that brain-work.

All those Lakshya Sen reflex defenses that scream “talent”, all those on-the-line smashes that seem effortless, it’s thousands of hours of hard work, with the 60+ coach literally standing there sparring with the youngster and making him buy into the power of countless repetitions on path to perfection.
It’s been years of micro-managing a moody teen’s emotional ups and downs, and starting from scratch patiently after every injury that felled Sen for long periods. And the coach never lost his sense of humour, or bluntness nor proportion.

Brutally honest in his assessments of his players when they lost, there was never mollycoddling or pampering over their mistakes. Perhaps the largest despondency when Sen couldn’t nail the Paris Olympics bronze against Lee Zii Jia, would’ve befallen Vimal Kumar who had worked many invisible hours on putting Sen’s game together.
For someone who treasures tradition of the All England, travelled there every summer for years, and gazed for hours watching squash legend Jansher Khan train at Birmingham where the two sports shared an arena and coinciding competitions, Vimal set store on insane work rate in training for racquet sports.

Still, he has always believed the game is played with skills and brains, and stuck to his guns on a rather unpopular philosophy: that a player should think independently, on their feet, and not need a coach for outsourced plotting. It doesn’t stop him from spilling forth from his chair desperately issuing instructions in the big matches. But if Sen and Saina grew a semblance of improvised thinking of their own, it was because Vimal made it very clear, they would not be spoon-fed always.

For both these success stories, there are a dozen others Vimal couldn’t push to extend their potentials – stopping a player from over-training is as tough as pushing them those 10 minutes extra beyond exhaustion thresholds. And taking Saina to World No 1 had its flipside in her not quite managing to beat Carolina Marin in two important finals, and the 2016 Rio injury devastation.

But if you wanted planning on how to win a tournament steeped in elite expertise, where broad contours of tactics and minutiae alike, were carefully spelt out, there were Indians you could count on two fingers.

Vimal Kumar remains invested in Lakshya Sen’s future forays, and remains a totem figure that the star blindly trusts. If Gopichand nurtures a dream of finding his All E successor, there is an equally determined coach in Bangalore who has been on the brink of success, but copped two very lopsided finals at Birmingham.

It’s 45 years of a ringside view for him since Padukone won in 1980. Forever in his shadow he might’ve been, but Sen’s 4th place at Paris, sure strengthened his resolve to get back onto the court. And try once more.