life and something that formal education misses many times i think from that perspective there are huge life lessons from sport which are beneficial for all of life and that is one reason why all of us should play apart from discipline dedication and all of these aspects q my granddaughter is six years old is it the right age to send her for badminton coaching m v murali a six is a good age to start with although i started playing the game at 10 so its not that there is a perfect age but since badminton is a skillbased sport and today the competition at younger ages is very high it is good if you start at the age of six q is it really necessary that one coaches professionally to make sports a career we hear of so many young cricketers coming up from littleknown places is it true of other sports too kailash singh a the art of learning something cannot be defined very clearly coaching is one good way of doing it but to be able to observe properly watch imitate and learn are also skills which cannot be overlooked with the kind of resources we have a keen interest in the sport and an eye to learn would be key factors so i believe that if somebody is able to do these things the element of coaching can be there 100 or maybe a bit lesser because you could have senior people or you could take advice from somebody and then keep doing it correctly in practice i think we need to understand that there are various forms of learning and having a coach or getting coached professionally is one part of it but not entirely true q my son is eight years old and started badminton coaching about six months ago can you please tell me the procedure to join your academy also how early in terms of age should one start coaching for a career in badminton raja sekhar m a its not necessary that we always look for best coach or best players at the very beginning i think its very important to see whether the kid enjoys the sport and has a nice environment or culture in the place where she is training as far as the gopichand academy is concerned we do have a summer coaching camp where we take some kids and make them join regular batches but at the moment we do not have any admissions in the senior batches we are building some more courts and by september we could have some more vacancies at the academy but if youre somebody whos already played the sport talented and can fit into a batch then we can look at having a test and joining so you could contact the academy if youre somebody whos playing well in your particular age group quote sport teaches us losing and recovering which is a very important aspect