Review of the book "Pullela Gopichand - The World Beneath His Feat"

Nicely written book. It talks about the amount of effort he and his family spent so that he continued his effort on badminton. How he came across badminton is also mentioned in the book.

Some of the other points noted from the book are the very poor and bad attitude of Indian Government towards sports and sporting infra-structure which we even see today. I remember the number of times I had to go to my sports teacher's office to get a barrel of shuttle which any would be very old outdated shuttles which would break on couple of shots! We have so much talent to beat the world but our government does not care much about it.

This book speaks volume of his return to Badminton after a very bad knee injury. The journey of recovery from knee injury, to winning All England Championship is nicely detailed. The commitment in Gopichand is commendable.

Overall a good read for any Badminton lover. The 2001 All England semi-final match between Peter Gade and Gopichand has been one of my favourite and I keep watching it again and again (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ru9V5FPeiY). The way he kept Peter Gade guessing all through out the match is super tremendous. It was great to read about what was going through Gopichand's mind during these games. The description of the final of All England Championship is wonderful.

Gopichand is one of my favourite sports person, so it was a wonderful read for me!

Someday I am hoping to lay my hands on the book "Dare to be a Champion" by Lee Chong Wei! :) That sure would be a great read as well like this one.

Playing to Win - Saina Nehwal

This is an autobiography by Saina Nehwal. Overall a simple book, but the amazing feeling that she has with aspects related to badminton is well detailed. Especially her experience at Olympics is well conveyed.

Very simple English and easy to read. Some folks criticized this as a compilation of blogs and shabbily written, but I feel it is well written, detailed and interesting.

The maturity with which even an young player has to deal with winning and losing is nicely conveyed. It was good to understand the huge amount of effort and sacrifice required by the player and their family to reach the top in world ranking. Currently she is world number 2.

Good number of photographs are there in the book which is a nice add.

Ko Sung Hyun and Lee Yong Dae wins Korea Super Series Mens Doubles

Nice to see new Korean Mens Doubles pair of  Ko Sung Hyun and Lee Yong Dae win the first Super Series of the year. Ko's confidence was high and his service was also good and consistent.

They played against Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen of Denmark to win the finals. Lee Yong Dae as usual was superb! It was nice to see Jung Jae Sung on the tv as well. He was in the audience watching the match.

Review of "An Inspirational Biography - Saina Nehwal"

A non-technical book that I read after a long long time. This book has 231 pages and is from NIMBY BOOKS (ISBN: 97881-906570-3-7). Simple English and an easy read. Good to read about Saina's childhood and how her parents put in lot of their effort to  help build Saina's career.

Even though it is a book about Saina, it was great to know about Gopichand and his All England victory. The details around this victory was good. Gopichand is one of my all time favourite player. Was nice to read about the strong commitment, focus that Gopichand had during his days as a player. I have seen his match against Peter Gade and Chen Hong on YouTube leading to All England victory. Truly superb matches. The way Gopichand held the shot and played it at the last moment with deception against the then world's top and deception king Peter Gade is worth watching. The amount of commitment and seriousness he has towards running his academy is nicely detailed. I admire Gopichand’s temperament. One full chapter in this book is dedicated to Gopichand with the heading "THE ROLE MODEL".

Details on some of the matches that Saina played and what she went through during those matches was good. Details of Saina's training are mentioned here at a very minimal level. Reason for decline in her performance in start of 2011 and why she changed her coach in between to Babu is mentioned in this book.

Overall a good book to read for someone who loves badminton and is fan of Saina and Gopichand.

There is another book by Saina called "Playing to Win" published recently. Planning to buy this book next. Then there is another book by Lee Chong Wei with the title "Dare to be a Champion". That would be the read after "Playing to Win". Then there is a book by Peter Gade , currently only in Danish, English version is supposed to be out in January 2013. Not sure if Lin Dan has already or has a plan to publish a book with his badminton story.

New icon for Badminton Galaxy

This is the new icon that I designed for my blog Badminton Galaxy.

New Badminton Forum

I finally got time to start a new forum. Following is the link to the same: http://badminton.freeforums.org/index.php

Currently there are only two topics:
- General
- Badminton Topics

General category would cater to all non-technical items like introduction, discussion regarding diet etc.

Badminton Topics category would cater to all technical items like Footwork, backhand clear, low serve etc.

Feel free to drop me a mail/comment on how I can improve the forum (content, layout, colors etc.). I will be adding number of categories and forums as and when I get time. If you have any specific category or forum that needs to be added, please let me know.

Screenshot of forum is shown below:

Improving backhand

Backhand is one area that I struggle a lot. This is one of the best link that I found on the internet. Steps are explained in a 1-2-3-4 format which is really great and is helping me. Here is the link for all out there who are trying to improve their backhand.

Link to video on improving backhand

Ofcourse, practise, practise, practise and more practise is the only way to improved backhand. :)