The Stanfords, Princetons, Harvards have been shaping Olympic champions for quite some time now. India’s done alright by its engineers largely, but not quite taken a truly geeky athlete right up to the Olympics in recent years. Along comes Malvika Bansod, a badminton player who took her time to find a foot-hold on the elite international circuit, because she was straddling computer engineering alongside – the curse of being a bright student, growing up in Nagpur. But the 23-year-old had a grandfather who was nutty about badminton, and asked his granddaughter to not stop pursuing excellence on the court.
This last week, Malvika recorded her second Top 15 victory at the All England. She had earlier defeated Paris Olympics bronze medallist Gregoria Mariska Tunjung in China. She can be dubbed a late bloomer, given at 23, she isn’t quite entrenched on the Tour as Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu were, having won the Olympics and World Championship medals before turning 25.
Malvika’s dentist mother, has taken up the responsibility of arming herself with domain knowledge of a nutritionist and a masseuse – because the middle class Nagpur family don’t have the funds to bring in specialists. She is neither as tall as Sindhu, or strong as Saina, though she first came to prominence when she defeated a very-injured Nehwal at India Open. But Indian badminton fans aren’t completely convinced she deserves funding help, because she hasn’t yet beaten PV Sindhu, nor become India No 1.
Malvika is independent in her thinking, extremely cerebral and not likely to submit to carte blanche demands of established academies / existing NGOs / elite coaches who prefer absolute control over the player. She is extremely polite, but reckons she can’t leave her brains outside and follow instructions if she doesn’t have the freedom to disagree. The Marathi mulgi has fought the past five years with exceptional self-belief, and put a small, start-up sized system of a coach, her parents and receives guidance from senior coaches in Maharashtra – advice that she has the discretion to accept or reject.
Malvika Bansod in action during her match against Aakarshi Kashyap at Yonex-Sunrise India Open 2022 at IG Stadium, Delhi on Friday. (File/BAI)
She is the new-age Indian athlete, hence, who can’t be confined by group-coaching systems. She needs the freedom to start succeeding, and can afford it because her self-discipline and motivation are extremely high. No dearth of ambition, and perfect clarity of how to get there, but with no funds to assemble a team. Her ranking (not Top 15, not India No 1, not backed by big names, not a teenager, not seen as Sindhu successor) means the official funding sources aren’t exactly forthcoming. Malvika is extremely hard on herself and till the top results arrive, might not be in a position to ask for help. Which makes it a chicken-egg situation, because without the funds and top notch sports science support, the results will be staggered, up and down. Sport is cruel to make a 23-year-old seem like the time has passed her by, but it doesn’t stop her from trying.
Her current coach is Vignesh Devlekar, another badminton-obsessed former national-level shuttler, who can handle the tactics and stroke-sharpening part of her training, but this last week, it was clear she needs a travelling physio and trainer that could push a World No 28 to much higher and get her to contend for titles.
The athlete and her family keep hoping that good results will bring in attention and financial support. To put it plainly – it might not, not in the way she likes, where she has freedom to decide for herself.
Story continues below this ad
It’s where the industry can step in, by taking a punt on someone who cannot be hemmed in by the system, or be allowed to be lost to politics. A voracious reader, completely unaffected and unsmitten by social media, who reads dictionaries to learn new words and chuckle, Malvika is that bright engineer, who might have easily taken home hefty LPA pay packages at a Bangalore or Hyderabad IT campus, or even likely, flown off to the US to do what millions of software pros do. Like the American T20 star cricketer Sourabh Netravalkar however, she kept her sporting dreams alive, though badminton needed full-time commitment.
Nagpur’s 23-year-old Malvika Bansod has also been a deeply driven badminton player, who ended two years of near-misses internationally, to scalp a marquee player – Gregoria Mariska Tunjung. (File)
The young woman is serious about qualifying for the Los Angeles Olympics. But as things stand, there’s mountains to move for her to even dream of getting there. The ascent from World No 28 to Top 10 might be the toughest of her life, and involve a bunch of decisions that could do with a financial cushioning.
Her game is pure hard-work, with a lot of brains thrown in, to make the most of her average frame and stature. In other words, she’s very typically Indian. But she’s a problem-solver, a non-cribber who loves the sport and believes she can beat the top names if a bunch of things fall into place.
Most importantly, she’s an engineer who continued to train on net drops, in between fretting over the stress that builds up around an M3 examination. Those were literally 12 hour days – 4 hours of training after 8 hours of academics.
Story continues below this ad
Malvika Bansod is trying one of those impossible things. Instead of flying out to San Jose to drive into Silicon Valley, she’s hoping to travel 358 miles further to where the Los Angeles Olympics would be in 2028. Tell me it wasn’t your second-best dream as an engineer.
