Prakash Padukone Won the 1980 All England Badminton Title Without Losing a Game, Beating Two-Time Champion Liem Swie King 15-3, 15-10 in the Final

Prakash Padukone became the first Indian to win the All England badminton championship on 23 March 1980, beating Indonesia’s Liem Swie King 15-3, 15-10 in the men’s singles final. He was 24 and seeded third, and he won the title without losing a game. Business Standard’s ANI report, The Quint’s IANS report, The Bridge and ESPN’s 2020 statistics piece all give that scoreline.

Until the sport’s world body launched its own world championships in 1977, the All England was treated as the unofficial world title, a point both the BWF and the Badminton Museum make. Padukone was only the second Indian to reach the final. ESPN records that Prakash Nath lost the 1947 final to Denmark’s Conny Jepsen, and the Badminton Association of India lists Nath as that year’s runner-up.

Two titles in two weeks, then London

Padukone came to England on a run. ESPN reports that he won the Denmark Open and the Swedish Open in the two weeks before the All England, and quotes him saying he was confident but was not thinking about winning the tournament. He had never gone past the quarter-finals at the All England. ESPN says he withdrew in 1979 with a foot injury that he had aggravated at the Denmark Open.

ESPN’s 2017 account lists his opponents in 1980: Brian Wallwork of England, then Sufian Abu Bakar of Malaysia (15-7, 15-0) and Hadiyanto of Indonesia (15-0, 15-10). In the quarter-final he beat Svend Pri of Denmark, the 1975 champion, 15-4, 15-4. In the semi-final he beat Morten Frost Hansen of Denmark 15-8, 15-10. ESPN’s 2020 piece counts 18 points conceded across the last-16 and quarter-final matches and says that was the joint-lowest for any men’s singles player in that edition for those two rounds.

King and Frost Hansen were the two top seeds, according to ESPN’s 2017 piece, and Padukone was seeded behind them.

King, the favourite

The Badminton Museum’s roll of honour lists King as champion in 1978 and 1979, and as champion again in 1981. In 1980 he was going for a third title in a row. ESPN and The Bridge describe him as the world’s top-ranked player at the time, and ESPN and Scroll report that he skipped the European tour events to arrive in London fresh.

According to ESPN’s 2017 interview, King had beaten Padukone in all four of their earlier meetings without losing a game. Padukone rejected the idea that this gave King a mental edge, saying the four matches had come at different points in his career. One of the defeats, ESPN’s 2020 piece records, was in the 1977 All England quarter-finals.

The two men played different games, in Scroll’s account of the final. King was quick and relied on big smashes, while Padukone preferred touch play, with control of the rallies, deception and work at the net.

How the final was played

Padukone’s own description, given to ESPN in 2017, is that he slowed the game down, kept the shuttle near the baseline and tested King’s backhand. By holding back his stroke, he said, he made King move “a fraction of a second late”. A drop came when King expected a toss, and a stroke when King expected a drop. Straight after the match he called it a “tactical win”.

King pushed harder towards the middle of the second game, ESPN writes, and Padukone answered with counter-dribbles at the net, high serves and easy lifts. Shirish Nadkarni, a former player covering the match for the now-closed Indian weekly Sportsweek, heard a fan say that “King whacks the shuttle, Prakash seems to caress it”. Padukone remembers the last point as an exchange of dribbles at the net, which he finished by moving forward.

The Bridge notes that games went to 15 points then. One report disagrees on the score: ESPN’s 2017 interview piece gives the first game as 15-8 and says it lasted barely eight minutes, while the four reports above give 15-3. This article uses 15-3, 15-10.

Wembley, the tube and the drift

The BWF says the championships moved to Wembley Arena in 1957 and stayed for 37 years, until a move to Birmingham in 1994. The Badminton Museum calls Wembley renowned for its air drift, the currents that bend a shuttle’s flight, and for its crowd on semi-final nights. Business Standard, The Quint and Scroll call the venue Wembley Stadium. The BWF and the museum name Wembley Arena as the championships’ home across those years.

The drift had troubled Padukone in earlier years, ESPN reports, but in 1980 he came with a plan for it. He told ESPN he could control it better than most players.

Padukone stayed at the YMCA in central London. The underground ride to Wembley took about 25 minutes, ESPN says, and he took it with his kit on the day of the final too. After the match, he told ESPN, someone from the Indian embassy offered him a car. Scroll gives the same detail.

What the title paid, and what changed

The prize was a medal and about 1,000 pounds, ESPN reports. “Materially I did not benefit at the time,” Padukone told the site, adding that the title brought him a name and fame that lasted. It took him a while to see its weight, he said, until trunk calls started arriving from across the world.

Fans lined the streets to welcome him home, Scroll reports. In an interview with Scroll he described 1980 as a dividing line for Indian badminton. Before it, he said, the sport had little coverage, few facilities, little money and little international exposure, and afterwards it became a major sport. ESPN quotes him: “Indian badminton came to be recognised as a force to reckon with.”

He reached the All England final again in 1981 and lost to King, and both the Badminton Association of India and the museum’s roll of honour record it. ESPN’s 2020 piece says he made the last eight in each edition from 1980 to 1986, with nine quarter-final, four semi-final and two final appearances in all, the most by an Indian. The All England title did not come again, ESPN notes.

Elsewhere he won the Indian national men’s singles title nine years running, from 1971 to 1979, according to Scroll’s book excerpt and the Padukone School of Badminton. In 1983 he won bronze at the world championships, which Scroll and Business Standard both call India’s first medal at that event.

Gopichand in 2001 and the names on the roll

Pullela Gopichand won the men’s singles in 2001, about 21 years after Padukone. As the tenth seed, ESPN’s 2016 feature says, he beat Sydney Olympic champion Ji Xinpeng in the last 16 and the top seed, Denmark’s Peter Gade, in the semi-final, and then China’s Chen Hong in the final. Gopichand had moved to Bangalore to train under Padukone, who had led a players’ rebellion in 1997. Padukone’s verdict on the 2001 result, in the same feature: “It is a fantastic achievement, a great day for Indian badminton.”

His academy in Hyderabad, set up in 2008 according to ESPN, has produced Saina Nehwal and P. V. Sindhu. Sindhu’s medals are covered in tuput’s piece on P. V. Sindhu’s two Olympic medals and her 2019 world title, and the men’s team title is in the account of India’s 2022 Thomas Cup win in Bangkok.

Olympic Gold Quest, co-founded by Padukone and Geet Sethi, describes itself on its history page as a non-profit foundation with a mission to help Indian athletes win Olympic gold medals.

On the Badminton Association of India’s page, Nehwal appears as the 2015 women’s singles runner-up, alongside Nath in 1947 and Padukone in 1981. As of 2 November 2026, the Badminton Museum’s roll of honour, which runs through the 2026 edition, carries two Indian names across all five events: Padukone in 1980 and Gopichand in 2001.