London Olympics bronze medallist Saina Nehwal on Tuesday vowed to maintain preventing as she believes she has the sport to match the very best within the enterprise.

The former world No. 1, who has had a tricky previous few years primarily as a consequence of a knee harm, notched up a preventing 21-17, 12-21, 21-19 win over world No. 24 Mia Blichfeldt of Denmark in her opening match.

“I have at all times been a fighter, I wish to problem,” said the 32-year-old from Hyderabad, who will take on Olympic champion Chen Yu Fei of China next.

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“See, my mind sometimes stops working after losing so many matches. You are losing and losing but then today I was not thinking about match points. This was giving me tension the last few matches because I was not pulling off matches.

“Confidence was lacking today but I am happy I played without any knee issues. The last few months, it was gradual improvement. I worked on my stamina, overall hitting game and everything went well today,” stated Saina.

Saina, whose finest end in 2022 was a quarter-final end on the Singapore Open, stated it was necessary to win a first-round match to get the self-belief again.

“I was getting powerful gamers in first spherical. I needed to pull out such matches in order that I can get confidence and play in opposition to the very best gamers. At the second, I will be good in opposition to the highest gamers,” she added.

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“She (Mia) has been playing well against top players. So, I think, with coverage, speed and shots I can match the top players.

“I have improved in my movement, and that made a lot of difference. I have been improving my knee, my body. The better my knees are, the better are my lunges.” Asked about what has been hardest factor to come back to phrases with in the previous couple of years, Saina stated, “Nothing, I imply, though, folks will discuss you not performing and it’s pure. If I take into consideration folks then I should cease enjoying badminton. I was simply fascinated by myself.

“I wished to discover a resolution. The concern was small, it was not one thing I couldn’t battle out. I simply thought it was not such a giant harm that I couldn’t discover a resolution to. If I can then good, if I can’t, there’s at all times the choice of stopping badminton.” Saina said she will quit the sport if her body fails to cope with the rigours.

“Players like to play, when the body says ‘no’ then you have to stop. There are some players who feel they have achieved enough, they stop but otherwise you always feel like doing well and when I feel I will also stop,” she stated.

Asked if there’s something left to realize, Saina replied, “Isn’t profitable good? It can be good.” “See, I have no motivation or feeling that I can be a coach. I can see that in Guru (RMV Gurusaidutt), (Parupalli) Kashyap and (HS) Prannoy in future. They all have that coaching ability, but I don’t even have that. So, I thought, let me play some more years.”

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