Indian shuttler Kidambi Srikanth reached his first men’s singles finals at the BWF event in 6 years with a win on Japan’s Yushi Tanaka at the Malaysia Masters Super 500 Badminton Tournament on Saturday. Srikanth, 32, the silver medalist at the 2023 World Championship, performed brilliantly, showing a glimpse of his old form, defeating the world number 23 Tanaka 21–18, 24–22 in a thrilling match with Tej Net Play and aggressive shot-making.
This is Srikanth’s first BWF World Tour Final after being runner -up at the 2019 India Open. His last title came in 2017, the year he won four medals. Srikanth, once the number 1 in the world, has slipped to 65th in the rankings, struggling with a decline in form and fitness in recent years.
Expressing his happiness on reaching the final after 6 years, Srikanth said that I am very happy. Physically, I feel good. But it is also true that I have not played a lot of matches last year, I am playing qualifying, so perhaps that experience of playing the match has been lost and yes everything went well this time.
He said that, I worked hard last month. This victory, which got over a very long time, is my feelings. Former World No. 1 Kidambi was going through a bad phase due to form and fitness related problems in the last few sessions.