If coaching one ward to an Olympic or World Championship medal is a fine achievement, what would one call a coach who has trained a bunch of players to win a truckload of international medals and titles? The very best, probably! That's what India's national badminton coach Pullela Gopichand is.

Gopi's students have won 200-plus medals/titles and that is nothing short of mind-blowing. Before going into what makes the 2001 All England champion so successful as a coach-cum-mentor, let me give you an idea of his progress rate. In 2011, when I was writing his book, The World Beneath His Feat, his Hyderabad academy students had won 30 titles abroad, including smaller BWF Challenger and Satellite ones.