* For two consecutive editions of the Badminton World Junior Championships now, shuttlers from Punjab, Tanvi Sharma of Hoshiarpur and Jagsher Singh Khangurra of Nabha, around 35 km from Patiala, have brought India medals. Since Tanvi finished runners-up at Senior Nationals three years ago, coaches estimate, around 200 girl trainees have been added across the state, inspired by her silver from World Juniors in 2025.* For the first time in the history of North Zone Badminton Championships this year, 10 Punjab players ended with medals across age-group competition and seniors.* The newest batch of badminton talent in Punjab is coming from rural areas of Gurdaspur, Ferozepur, Hoshiarpur and Phagwara, even as 20 small-scale academies have mushroomed all over the state, a four-fold rise over the past five years.* The Punjab government poured in nearly Rs 3.5 crore for the refurbishment of the Raizada Hansraj stadium at Jalandhar from 2022 to 2026, while the number of synthetic courts in the state has gone from four to 10 in the last three years.* A U17 boys national final in 2025 ended up being Punjab vs Punjab, with Jagsher winning the title. The sleeping giant was waking up.Even as Jagsher Singh (17) makes waves with an unexpected World Juniors bronze medal in Cairo, after reaching the semi-final on Friday, and Tanvi Sharma (18) inspires Punjab girls to dream big and ready themselves for elite competition, the state is showing signs of a badminton boom, which was inevitable. Tanvi’s emergence provided the spark.Mehvish Kaur, the reigning North Zone junior champ, hails from border-town Gurdaspur. “Both me and her grandfather, an armyman, played the sport so we had to put her in badminton,” says father Ravinderpal Singh, a Punjab electricity board engineer, who got the teen started on badminton seven years ago. “Tanvi’s mother’s dedication was inspiring,” he says. It meant Ravinderpal first sought out an NIS-certified personal coach and hired a private court for her training as she won the school Nationals.Story continues below this adAnother enterprising set of parents is from rural Ferozepur, where Japleen Kaur is on the up-curve, having won the 2025 U15 sub-junior ranking meet at Bhagalpur after her father took on the challenge of coaching her.Perhaps the biggest female success from Punjab post-Tanvi is Inayat Gulati of Phagwara. A district champ within two months of starting at the age of seven, Inayat began picking state crowns across three age groups and moved to Ratti Academy at Jalandhar, winning the Jaipur ranking meet a fortnight ago. She was picked for the National Centre of Excellence in Guwahati after a U15 Asian medal in China.“We had no background in sport, but after some skating, I decided to put her in badminton,” says mother Shivani. “Since we know Inayat’s good and we are in it for the long haul, we will support her all the way, just like Tanvi’s mother, an inspiration. She’s a big P V Sindhu fan, and trains hard for 7-8 hours.”Punjab could have been in the spotlight 25 years ago, with Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Amritsar and Mohali having a fairly steady badminton culture that gave India international medallists Pranav Jerry Chopra and Dhruv Kapila.Story continues below this adJalandhar’s Sachin Ratti created a massive stir late in 2001, using his parallel attacks to defeat recently crowned All England champ Pullela Gopichand and becoming the first Indian in a while to beat the future national coach. But association “politics” meant the spark was cruelly stubbed.“My family was staying at Hansraj stadium where I trained,” Ratti recalls. “I was doing really well, and beating a great player like Gopi meant I had potential. But the local politics did everything to break me. They cut off the water supply and electricity to the stadium, and literally hounded me out of Punjab,” he says.He moved to Maharashtra and returned only in the last decade to set up an academy in Jalandhar, where he now trains around 80-90 players. Prolonged court cases and a trench fight finally handed the association reins in 2021 to media publisher Ritin Khanna, himself a former national-level player.“We travelled in sleeper class unreserved, had a maximum of 3-4 badly conducted ranking tournaments while the association didn’t care,” Khanna, the Punjab association secretary, recalls. When his nephew brought home two rose-buds as a prize for winning a district meet and said badminton was pointless, Khanna was roused into rustling up a resistance.Story continues below this adNow, elite coaches are paid a salary of Rs 1 lakh a month, all Punjab-representing top players travel 1AC, gyms are being added to academy halls and draws are online and transparent. “How Sachin (Ratti) was pushed out and insulted hurt me. I knew I had to change badminton. But it’s players like Tanvi and Jagsher whose success is propelling the sport. Punjab has a huge drug problem amongst youth. The youth need a sport like badminton,” Khanna says.“Tier-3 towns with more hunger and strength are throwing up female players. Tanvi’s mother Meena inspired many parents,” he says.For Khanna, the road map is clear. “We want to bring a Malaysian coach to Jalandhar. Also, I’m pushing the state government to subsidise expensive shuttles because players are coming from far flung rural corners and need support,” he says. “Tanvi and Jagsher have shown Punjab has it.”