Having recovered from injuries, Saina Nehwal makes a return to international competition as PV Sindhu opts out of Thailand Open Super 500 tournament that begins in Bangkok, Thailand on July 30.

With a runner-up finish at the Indonesia Open and an appearance in the quarter-finals at the Japan Open a week later, Sindhu has had a hectic schedule this month and her decision to take rest and prepare for next month’s World Championships is indeed a judicious one.
The 2019 Indonesia Masters champion Nehwal will be seeded seventh at this tournament and begins the hunt for her second title of the season against a qualifier.

While Nehwal is the lone Indian in the women’s singles draw, there are as many as six shuttlers from the country in the men’s singles section.

For the fifth-seeded Kidambi Srikanth, who meets a qualifier, the challenge will be to re-discover his touch and strokes after struggling to do so in Jakarta and Tokyo. Srikanth did show flashes of brilliance on his way to the final of the India Open in March. However, the former World No. 1 hasn’t been able to replicate that form since then.

Syed Modi International champion Sameer Verma is the other Indian seeded at eighth and he will have to deal with World No. 17 Lee Zii Jia.

The resurgent Sai Praneeth, who made a splash last week at the Japan Open by reaching the semi-finals, has Thailand’s Kantaphon Wangcharoen in his opener but his path gets rockier for there awaits the World No. 1 Kento Momota, who begins his challenge against Subhankar Dey. Interestingly, it was the Japanese who halted Sai’s great run in Tokyo before going on to win the title himself.

HS Prannoy, who beat Srikanth in Japan, will seek better fortunes this week when he takes on Hong Kong veteran Wong Wing Ki Vincent. Prannoy could not build on his huge upset and have crashed out of the Japan Open in the second round.

Former Commonwealth Games gold medallist Parupalli Kashyap has a good chance to progress past Misha Zilberman of Israel

Crick­et coach Robin Singh has moved from Trinidad to In­dia and just about every­where else. And what a jour­ney this has been for the well-known crick­eter-now-coach who was born in Princes Town, and who has been trav­el­ling since de­part­ing these shore many years ago. Af­ter leav­ing Trinidad, he end­ed up stay­ing in In­dia and mak­ing a name for him­self in the crick­et­ing world, rep­re­sent­ing that coun­try at the high­est lev­el both as a play­er and coach.

That he rep­re­sent­ed and cap­tained Trinidad and To­ba­go at the un­der-19 lev­el and played a cou­ple of games for the se­nior T&T team be­fore head­ing off to In­dia is the stuff that dreams are made of.

In his play­ing hey­day, he was an all-rounder, a left-hand­ed bats­man, right-hand­ed bowler, and ex­cit­ing field­s­man. Fol­low­ing his T&T play­ing days, he went on to rep­re­sent In­dia in 136 One Day In­ter­na­tion­al match­es scor­ing over 2,000 runs with one cen­tu­ry and nine half-cen­turies, cap­tured 69 wick­ets with a best of five for 22 and held 33 catch­es. His in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer spanned from 1989 to 2001 fol­low­ing which he re­tired and then be­came a coach.

Wis­den de­scribed him as an ath­let­ic, tena­cious and com­mit­ted all-rounder. Read­ers can catch a glimpse of him in his hey­day in ac­tion.

As the high­ly re­gard­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-ac­claimed coach of the win­ning Mum­bai In­di­ans in the huge­ly pop­u­lar IPL (In­di­an Pre­mier League) he has al­so been one of the pre­mier coach­es of the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents fran­chise in the CPL. T&T’s crick­et­ing su­per­star Kieron Pol­lard has been a mem­ber of both the Mum­bai and Bar­ba­dos squads which Singh coach­es.

The 55-year-old glo­be­trot­ting coach will don the colors of the St Kitts Pa­tri­ots in the 2019 CPL edi­tion.

Singh be­gan his coach­ing ca­reer al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter his play­ing days. He was asked by then pres­i­dent of the BC­CI Jag­mo­han Dalmiya to coach In­dia’s A team and un­der-19 teams.

Tours to Pak­istan, Eng­land, Aus­tralia, and a World Cup un­earthed a wealth of In­di­an tal­ent who went on to be­come big names in In­di­an crick­et. Ro­hit Shar­ma, Shikhar Dhawan, Ir­fan Pathan, Am­bati Rayudu, Robin Uthap­pa, Parthiv Pa­tel, and Ravin­dra Jade­ja have all donned In­dia’s se­nior colors un­der his tute­lage.

Hong Kong crick­et ap­proached him to coach their na­tion­al team in 2004 and un­der his tenure qual­i­fied to play in the Asia Cup and gained ODI sta­tus. He was award­ed for Coach­ing Ex­cel­lence by Hong Kong.

Af­ter the In­di­an Na­tion­al Team suf­fered an un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous ex­it in the 2007 World Cup he was an­nounced as the field­ing coach. With­out a head coach and just Singh, a man­ag­er and bowl­ing coach, a young In­di­an team went on to win the first-ever T20 World Cup in 2007.

In 2008, world crick­et saw the in­tro­duc­tion of T20 leagues with the ar­rival of the IPL in In­dia. It has grown in stature every year with al­most every crick­et play­ing na­tion hav­ing their own leagues al­ready or plan­ning to. This is the for­mat in which Singh has be­come syn­ony­mous and has gained im­mense recog­ni­tion and con­sid­ered among the top few in­ter­na­tion­al coach­es.

To­day the cham­pi­on team with the most ti­tles (four) in the IPL is the Mum­bai In­di­ans. He has been with them since 2010 and it has been the turn­ing point of the side’s his­to­ry. They have al­so won two Glob­al league cham­pi­onships called the Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, he was ap­point­ed coach in oth­er coun­try leagues name­ly Bangladesh, Sri Lan­ka, and the West In­dies…the first for an In­di­an coach. His team UVA won the on­ly year Sri Lan­ka held a T20 League. He has coached Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents since the in­cep­tion of The CPL. They have won once and made the semis twice. Here his mul­ti-cul­tur­al per­son­al­i­ty and back­ground helped him im­mense­ly. Hav­ing grown up in Trinidad and played for ten years dur­ing the sum­mers in the UK, he is very com­fort­able with play­ers of var­i­ous na­tion­al­i­ties.

Dur­ing the years 2012 -2014 he was ap­proached by the USA Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion to coach their Un­der 19s in prepa­ra­tion for their World Cup cam­paigns. He went on to coach both their Se­nior Men’s and Women’s teams.

A ten-over for­mat in World crick­et was in­tro­duced in 2017 for the very first time in the UAE. Each year it has at­tract­ed 100 top crick­eters from all over the world for this ever in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar ‘crick­et car­ni­val’ called T10 crick­et. In the in­tro­duc­to­ry year 2017, Singh was roped in by the fran­chise, Kerela Kings.

As with all oth­er fran­chis­es where he is the coach he analy­ses play­ers, play­ing con­di­tions, op­po­nents, then strate­gis­es and se­lects the best team in a live tele­cast play­er auc­tion. Kerela Kings won the in­au­gur­al tro­phy. Robin switched to a dif­fer­ent fran­chise for the fol­low­ing year, North­ern War­riors, and guid­ed them to the ti­tle vic­to­ry. Back-to-back ti­tles in the on­ly T10 tour­na­ment ever held, al­beit with dif­fer­ent teams!

He has re­cent­ly opened his own Crick­et Acad­e­my in Dubai…the aim of the acad­e­my is to hone the skills of young as­pi­rants and pro­vide the guid­ance and fa­cil­i­ties to crick­eters dur­ing their off-sea­son or pre-tour­na­ment prepa­ra­tions.

Look out for more of Robin Singh on the crick­et­ing front as he promis­es much more in the years ahead.