Click to play videoNew Delhi: Badminton player Saina Nehwal is on a roll and is now ranked 12th in the world. This is the highest any Indian woman has ever reached in the world rankings.
Saina returned home on Monday night after an impressive game at the Asian Grand Prix series.
There were high expectations after her quarter final appearance at the Beijing Olympics and Saina lived up to it by winning the Chinese Taipei Grand Prix a few weeks ago.
She crashed out in the first round of the Japanese Open but reached semi-finals of China Open last week.
CNN-IBN spoke to a Saina in Hyderabad and she said that she is very happy after returning.
“I am very happy about it. I never thought that I would reach 12 by September end. I was aiming at top 20 by the end of the year but now as I have reached 12, I am aiming at top 10 by the end of the year. It has been great five, six months for me. I have been playing well and I am beating good top players and I my game is improving. I play my best and I keep on improving my ranking,” says the victorious player.
Saina also talked about her future plans mentioning the name of the tournaments she is preparing for.
“Positive is that day by day I am improving my ranking which will really help me to get good draw in the future tournament and second thing is that I am getting to play good matches. Next year I'll be having good tournament like All England, Junior World Championship, so that will really help me to learn by playing with top players. These are the positive things that I have taken from them and one thing is that beating Julian in China was excellent match result, beating her with her hometown was unbelievable because the way the spectators were supporting her but still I was cool and I thought that I can do it. I was so focused that I had only one thought in my mind that I can win against it and I should beat world champion and I am really happy about it,” she adds.
The badminton player said that she is working hard and won’t repeat the mistakes she did in her recent game.
“Now, I will just working for two weeks and I have Commonwealth and Junior World Championship. For junior world championship I think I am pretty prepared for that but for future coming super series which is in November I have a good 20 days break after Junior Commonwealth Championship so I will see how to improve and how to play with those players, I will recollect at that time and hopefully I shouldn't repeat the same mistake which I did here.”
(For updates you can share with your friends, follow IBNLive on Facebook, Twitter and Google+)
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
displayed with permission. Use of the CNN name and/or logo on or as part of CNN-IBN does not derogate from the intellectual property rights of Cable News Network in respect of them.