India should focus more on doubles: Yusuf Jauhari

Renowned badminton coach from Indonesia, Yusuf Jauhari, is on his first visit to Mumbai.

Under the Tata Capital Super Shuttlers scheme, he has been grooming young talent at five city clubs, spending two days at each of them.

“It’s a new experience and I’m adapting to the requirement and correcting the players’ mistakes,” says Yusuf, roped in by the Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy in Bangalore on an annual contract.

The Jauharis are born teachers. Yusuf’s elder brother Atik was the national coach of Indonesia. Atik  also coached India in the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

Yusuf has coached Candra Wijaya, who won men’s doubles gold at the Sydney Olympics. He was at the national camp when Indonesia’s Susi Susanti was making a mark at the international circuit. He also coached in Sweden for nearly a decade.

It was at Yusuf’s insistence that Wijaya changed from singles to doubles. “I told him he had no future in singles,” Yusuf says. “He went to become an Olympic gold medallist in the men’s doubles.”

He believes India too must go that route. “India need more doubles players, though Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu are coming along well. In Indonesia, the focus is on doubles training. Not so in India. Doubles is as important for the country as singles. Coaches also need to help players choose between the two.”

India have struggled with their doubles combination in recent times. Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa separated after last year’s Olympics and are looking for different partners. Jwala and V Diju have also split.

The conversation veers towards the art of coaching. He played the sport at a young age. And he has done his study to qualify as a good coach. No wonder he is against the trend of players taking to coaching without theoretical knowledge.

“Players-turned-coaches are better if they go on to study the theories of coaching.

Without scientific background, coaches cannot deliver. I talk about a year’s training programme that consists of general session, specific session, pre-competitive session and competitive sessions. Coaches, if they don’t study, don’t know the programme. It becomes difficult to prepare a coaching programme and coordinate for training schedule,” he says.

Does he advocate change in the way upcoming Indian players are being coached? Indian shuttlers, he insists, have a good “basic technique”. But he feels the coaches here still need to work on certain areas.

“Earlier, training in India was done by throwing the shuttle. Now it is multi-feed and multi-shuttle training. The focus is on speed, endurance, and accuracy training. The shuttlers’ footwork is not very well developed in India,” he avers, adding that badminton used to be “an art”.  “Now it is all about power, speed and more money.” He thinks players do need a change of mindset. Yusuf laments the way they hunt for points. The focus, he points out, has shifted to playing more tournaments. “They must choose tournaments that are important. There is not enough recovery time if they play all the tournaments and they risk injury,” he signs off.