Fifteen Years After Her Own Bronze, Ashwini Ponnappa Backs Treesa-Gayatri To Go 'Bigger' At Badminton Worlds

It took seventy minutes to break fifteen years.

Some medals take longer to arrive than the match that wins them. Ashwini Ponnappa has known the high of a World Championship podium since 2011, and on Friday evening at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, she watched someone else chase that same high all over again.

The happiness on court was not hers to keep. It belonged to Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, and for once, Ponnappa seemed glad to just watch, as the BWF World Championships 2026 in New Delhi delivered a moment India had been waiting for.

There is nostalgia in it for Ponnappa, but not the kind that settles for a repeat. "Better and bigger" is what she wants for the pair, she told Outlook India on the sidelines of the World Championships.

Fifteen years is the length of time Indian women's doubles has waited to return to this stage. That is how long it has been since Jwala Gutta and Ponnappa herself reached the World Championship semifinals, on their way to bronze in London in 2011.

Careers have started and ended in the years since, with no pair going as far. Now, on home soil, in Delhi, Treesa and Gayatri have matched that landmark in front of the crowd that raised them.

Ending A Fifteen-Year Drought

Treesa and Gayatri had never beaten Jia Yi Fan and Zhang Shu Xian before Friday. Three previous meetings, three losses.

The quarterfinal opened in familiar fashion too, with the Indians dropping the first game 16-21. What followed was a different pair altogether.

They regrouped to take the next two games 21-15, 21-13, completing a fightback that kept India's title campaign alive and finally matched the mark Gutta and Ponnappa had set fifteen years earlier.

Their win meant India already had a guaranteed medal by the time the day's other big contest got underway. That contest did not go India's way.

Smash Brothers Fall Short

"Hot and cold day. Glad that Gayatri and Treesa won. It would have been even more awesome if Satwik and Chirag had also won their match. They had a tough match today, so did Gayatri and Treesa," Ponnappa told Outlook India.

"But yeah, incredible that at least we still have that streak of at least one medal from India at the World Championships continuing, and it's nice that it's women's doubles this time," she added.

Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty had walked into their quarterfinal carrying the weight of a vocal home crowd and the hope of a second Indian medal at the tournament.

The third-seeded Chinese pair of Liang Wei Keng and Wang Chang had other plans, closing out a straight-games win, 18-21, 9-21, in just 36 minutes.

It ended the Smash Brothers' medal hopes in Delhi, but not their standing in Indian badminton. Their most defining achievement remains the men's doubles gold at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou, badminton's first-ever Asian Games gold for India.

Two World Championship bronzes since have made them a fixture in the conversation whenever Indian doubles badminton comes up.

That fixture, fifteen years after Ponnappa's own breakthrough, is exactly what she believes is about to widen.

From One Name To Two

"For sure. Having played and done well here at the World Championships in Delhi, it's definitely going to make a massive change and help Gayatri and Treesa be a household name like Satwik and Chirag. The fact that they're doing well in front of the home crowd, taking the energy, and executing when needed is definitely going to help," Ponnappa said.

For years, doubles badminton in India has largely been shorthand for one pairing. Say SatChi, and everyone in the room knows exactly who you mean.

Ponnappa believes Treesa and Gayatri are on the verge of earning that same instant recognition, and that a fifteen-year gap between medals is exactly what makes this moment count for more.

The Next Test

"The next match will be tougher, but I want them to do better. I want them to go for gold and make it bigger than what we achieved," Ponnappa said.

Treesa and Gayatri now turn to Saturday's semifinal, where top seeds Liu Shengshu and Tan Ning of China await. It is the furthest an Indian women's doubles pair has gone at a World Championships since Ponnappa and Gutta's run to bronze in 2011, fifteen years and a generation of players ago.