Treesa Jolly laughs and mock-clucks her disappointment, recalling that she hasn’t eaten anything unusual since she was 16 years old and enjoyed spiced crispy grasshoppers. Now 21, the enforcer of the women’s doubles team, with Gayatri Gopichand, swallows back the mirth, gravely stating, “When you start travelling so much for competitions away from home, you learn to not fuss, and eat everything.” Treesa-Gayatri’s badminton has been a bit like that.
The women’s doubles duo will be trying to make an impression when they make their debut in the year-end BWF World Tour Finals, which begin here on Wednesday. Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand will be India’s lone representatives in the BWF World Tour Finals 2024. The Group Stage begins at the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Centre Gym. They will be facing the Chinese Pair of Liu Sheng Shu and Tang Ning.
Their last group match will be against World No. 4 Nami Matsuyama and Japan’s Chiharu Shida. However, the Indians will be confident going into the match after defeating the Japanese duo at the Badminton Asia Team Championships. Treesa and Gayatri are ready to stun and establish their worth on the world’s biggest stage, thanks to increased defense, agility, stroke play, and speed.
India’s Declining Depth in Badminton
They became the first Indian women’s doubles combination to win the tournament, By the end of the season, they had re-entered the top eight of the World Tour Rankings, an impressive performance given that just one other Indian women’s doubles duo had done so. Notably, several prominent Indian badminton players, unable to overcome the disappointment of missing out on the Paris Olympic podium, failed to qualify for this year’s BWF World Tour Finals.
Group B includes Rin Iwanaga and Kie Nakanishi from Japan, Baek Ha Na and Lee So Hee from South Korea, Febriana Dwipuji Kusuma, Chen Qing Chen, and Jia Yi Fan. The tournament will include top singles players including Wang Zhiyi (China), Busanan Ongbamrungphan (Thailand), Kunlavut Vitidsarn (Thailand), Chou Tien-Chen (Chinese Taipei), Lee Zii Jia (Malaysia), and Jonatan Christie (Indonesia), among others.
