Why they rank here
India's most decorated badminton player, P.V. Sindhu turned the World Championship podium into her own: five medals between 2013 and 2019 — a women's singles record — culminating in the 2019 title in Basel, where she demolished Nozomi Okuhara in the final. She is a two-time Olympic medallist, taking silver at Rio 2016 in an epic loss to Carolina Marin and bronze at Tokyo 2020, becoming the first Indian woman to win two individual Olympic medals. Tall, powerful and relentless, with a punishing cross-court smash, she carried Indian badminton's global breakthrough alongside coach Pullela Gopichand. More than her titles, Sindhu's marketability and big-match presence helped transform badminton into a mainstream sport in a cricket-obsessed nation of 1.4 billion, making her one of the most recognisable and commercially significant athletes the sport has produced.
Career profile
Each bar shows how this athlete compares with the strongest in our all-time list for that metric.