Major honours
The Badminton Association of India was founded in 1934, but India became a constant at the world level only after the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy opened in Hyderabad in 2008. Gopichand, a former player, won the All England men's singles title in 2001, following the country's first world-class achievement 21 years earlier when Prakash Padukone won the same event in 1980. Academy graduate Saina Nehwal won India's first-ever Olympic badminton medal, a bronze, at London 2012, and P.V. Sindhu added silver at Rio 2016, bronze at Tokyo 2020 and a World Championship gold in Basel in 2019. In Bangkok in 2022, a national team led by Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty routed Indonesia 3-0 to win India's first-ever Thomas Cup, 73 years after the tournament's 1949 founding. The Premier Badminton League and corporate sponsorship underpin this rise.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
Repeated clashes between Sindhu and Nozomi Okuhara or Akane Yamaguchi, including the 2017 Glasgow World Championship final, made Japan the sharpest rivalry. Since the 3-0 win over Indonesia in the 2022 Thomas Cup final, India's standing against the traditional Southeast Asian powers has also become an equal one.