Published>Fri, Jul 16 10 11:18 AM
Headlines may begin to grow weary of her mention, such has been Saina Nehwal's grip over bold proclamations of success on sports pages in the last one month. On a day when she found herself hiking to World No 2 in badminton's latest rankings, she also declared her intentions of eyeing the No 1 spot, albeit on her own inimitably strict terms.
"World No. 1 is important, but I'll truly deserve to be number one only when I've beaten all the top players, or when I'm a World Champion," the 20-year-old shuttler said, reiterating her priorities: title conquests come first, rankings will reflect later.
"No. 2 is great, but I can't keep thinking of rankings. I'll focus on winning tournaments, because when I win, I'm everywhere - in the limelight, in the top rankings, in people's minds," she said of her simplified goal-setting, while happy at the latest achievement. Nehwal's promotion to No. 2 came at the expense of Chinese Xin Wang who dropped almost 3000 ranking-points in this last tournament week to slip down to No 3 pushing the triple-crown winner of last month to her highest ranking, and puts the Indian just below reigning No 1 Yihan Wang.
Nehwal greeted the No. 2 news with a mix of caution, elation and some laidback banter. "Something or the other keeps happening everyday and there's some good news always these days! The last one month, I've woken up to success on many days and it feels nice. It's been dream-like. I'd just get up, play a match and then win day after day for 3 weeks. After that it's been lots of interviews and felicitation - talking lots day after day," she said.
Nehwal's idolising of Roger Federer is well-known, but she similarly looks up to India's champion batsman Sachin Tendulkar, whose unsatiable hunger for runs makes him a global icon. "He's an inspiration - to keep aiming higher," she says.
The two people most privy to her ambitions then, were her parents. "Mom and Dad - they always stood behind me, but stayed in the backdrop all these years. It's only now that they've come into the limelight. They joke that they're more famous than me on TV! But I owe to them the confidence even in tough times," Nehwal says.
But there's no two ways about who's the one player she's gunning to conquer. "I like winning all my matches, but there's just one player I'm obsessed with beating. The World No 1. Right now it's Yihan Wang and I still feel bad that I lost to her at the Uber Cup in Malaysia...lost 21-18 in the third set. That was very close and it hurts," she says. She's World No 2, but when the glee's set aside, Nehwal's strongest emotion on this day is her restless resolve to beat the World No 1.
Source: Web Search
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