Kidambi Srikanth Mourns Cancellation of Tournaments as He Misses the Bus to Tokyo Olympics

Kidambi Srikanth will not be at the Tokyo Olympics after his slim hopes of qualifying ended after the game’s governing body, Badminton World Federation (BWF) on Friday made it clear there will not be any change in the current ranking list and no further tournament will be held inside the qualification period. Srikanth was a quarter-finalist at the Rio Olympics and he has now missed the bus to the 2020 Olympics. Srikanth had a great year back in 2017 but since then, he has blown hot and cold. He said it was his goal to make the Olympics and get a medal but he was disappointed to not have qualified for the Games.

“See there is nothing much that you and I could have done, things in the last couple of months went out of control. But BWF can look into this matter and probably take a decision which will help every player as five-six tournaments were cancelled.

“And if all of them could have happened, there was a good chance of me qualifying for the Olympics. Tournaments were cancelled and players lost the chance of qualifying so I think BWF should look into this matter and make a decision,” Srikanth said to ANI.

In its statement, BWF said, “As such, while the qualification period officially closes 15 June 2021 as per the Revised Tokyo 2020 Qualification System, the current Race To Tokyo rankings list will not change.”

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, BWF had earlier revised the qualification period till June 15 after postponement of three important events. However, even after that, three qualifiers – India Open, Malaysia Open and Singapore Open – had to be cancelled.

“Players who have qualified already I think are very motivated and those who missed out are disappointed and are feeling bad about it.

None of us really knew what will happen. Last year in March the first lockdown happened but if you see, in December 2020 things were really normal and I played a tournament in January and in March but immediately after that things started getting worse and everything got cancelled.

But if BWF can think of making new rules, it will help the players who were on the verge of qualification. It is not the end of me, I will keep working hard and I will try to do the best in future tournaments.”

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