Nurturing dreams of picking up a racquet, the then 10-year-old Sumit went against his father's wishes to pick up a bat and decided to follow his dreams instead. "My father, an athletic coach, wanted me to get into cricket but I was not interested at all. Then he put up the option of picking up lawn tennis but I wanted to become like Gopi Chand after I saw him win the All England Championship in 2001," shares the Andhra Pradesh player.

After learning the basics of the game from coach Govardhan at Sports Authority, Andhra Pradesh for four years, he finally decided to train under his idol, Gopi Chand and the result began to show when he won three out of the five All India Ranking Championships that he participated in last year. "2008 was a good year for me. You can say that my career got a boost after I won those three titles. Before that, I had reached one finals in 2007," says an exulted Sumit.