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When they start their campaigns at the Australia Open badminton competition here on Tuesday, star Indian shuttlers PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth will try to snap out of their recent slump.
The Super 500 competition for USD 420,000 will be Sindhu and Srikanth's final opportunity to rediscover their form before the World Championships, which will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Since recovering from an injury, Sindhu, the 2019 world champion, has made early exits in as many as seven of the 12 BWF World Tour events this year, and she hasn't quite looked the part.
Sindhu has experienced a lot this year, having parted ties with Korea's Park Tae-Sang and worked with SAI coach Vidhi Chaudhary before settling on 2003 All-England winner Muhammad Hafiz Hashim as her new coach.
There isn't much time because she has back-to-back events scheduled, but the two-time Olympic medalist will try to use Hashim to help her discover her best self and test out some of her moves when she faces fellow countrywoman Ashmita Chaliha in the first round today.
The only time the two competed against one another on the international stage was at the 2022 India Open, where Sindhu triumphed. However, they had also met at the 2019 Senior Nationals Championships in Guwahati, where Ashmita had also lost.
Even Srikanth hasn't been able to string together victories in a single week. He displayed flashes of his prime when, at the Japan Open, he dominated Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei with his signature attacking style before falling to fellow Indian HS Prannoy.
When facing Japan's Kenta Nishimoto on the court, the former world number one will need to control his mistakes.
The most reliable Indian athletes this season have been Prannoy, Lakshya Sen, and the world number 2 duo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty.
Satwik and Chirag, who have won four titles, have been the buzz of the town, but they have chosen to forgo the competition in order to get ready for the World Championships (August 21–27).
