HS Prannoy was a part of the history-making Indian contingent that won the country’s first-ever Thomas Cup. Led by All-England winner Pullela Gopichand, the team beat 14-time champions Indonesia in the finals for a gold finish in the World Men’s Team Championships. 

During their campaign, India defeated powerhouses like China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and Denmark. 

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In the finals, Lakshya Sen, Kidambi Srikanth and world number 8 doubles duo of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy produced memorable performances.

Sen came from behind to defeat world no 5 Anthony Sinisuka Ginting 8-21 21-17 21-16. Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty then beat Mohammad Ahsan and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo 18-21 23-21 21-19. Srikanth then summed up India’s dominant show by outclassing Asian games gold medallist Jonatan Christie 21-15 23-21. 

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Prannoy, in an exclusive interview with NDTV, revealed the turning point of India’s campaign. He said that the team’s loss to Chinese Taipei in their final group match gave them the spark to go on and win the tournament. 

“I think Chinese Taipei was the turning point. If we had won against Chinese Taipei then probably we would not have won the Thomas Cup. We needed that realisation in between the tournament and that gave a huge spark to the entire team. They knew exactly what went wrong and we didn’t want that to happen in the next three matches. And that was the turning point,” Prannoy told NDTV.

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In the final group match, HS Prannoy, Lakshya Sen and the doubles pair of MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila all lost. Only Kidambi Srikanth came back with a win. 

“I think this is one of those moments which you always wanted to happen and it happened last week. I am really glad that lot of things came in place for this victory to happen. Thank you very much to the entire country for their whole support over the last week,” Prannoy added.