Indian badminton star HS Prannoy, who has made India proud with his skills and raised the tricolour high at the international arena many times, turned 31 on Monday. Prannoy has a long history of making India proud at the international stage. The shuttler has a solid resume at the junior level, having won a bronze medal at the 2010 Guadalajara Junior World Championships. In the same year at Youth Olympic Games, he won a silver in the men’s singles competition. Prannoy also did well in 2016 South Asian Games at Shillong-Guwahati, winning a gold and silver in men’s team and men’s singles events. The 31-year-old has a solid resume at continental-level meets as well. He is a two-time medalist in Asian Team Championships in 2016 and 2020. He has also attained some singles success at the continental level, winning a bronze in the 2018 Asian Championships in Wuhan. Recently in the Asian Mixed Team Championships in Dubai this year, Prannoy won a bronze medal. Prannoy has also won a Commonwealth Games gold medal in the mixed team competition along with the likes of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, Kidambi Srikanth, Saina Nehwal, Ashwini Ponappa and N Sikki Reddy etc. Prannoy won his first-ever Badminton World Federation (BWF) World Tour title in 2023 in May, defeating China’s Weng Hongyang in the final. He has also won three titles in BWF Grand Prix, the Indonesia Masters (2014), the Swiss Open (2016) and the US Open (2017). He also won the Tata Open India International as a part of the BWF International Challenge in 2014.
Perhaps the biggest achievement of his career is guiding India to their maiden Thomas Cup title. The tournament is the top men’s team tournament in Badminton.
Ever since its inception in 1949, India captured its first title by blanking multi-time champions Indonesia by 3-0 last year. The Indian team had stars including Lakshya Sen, Kidambi, Satwiksairaj/Chirag, M R Arjun/Dhruv
