Arunachal’s badminton team nets a Taiwanese icon player
THE WARRIORS IS ONE OF THE TWO NEW TEAMS FOR PBL’S 2018 SEASON BEGINNING DECEMBER 23
GUWAHATI: A new team of Premier Badminton League (PBL) has brought together two territories – Arunachal Pradesh in India and Taiwan in South China Sea – that Beijing claims as it own.
Taiwanese shuttler Wang Tzu-wei, ranked 10th in men’s singles, is the icon player of North Eastern Warriors owned by TK Engineering Consortium Pvt Ltd, a firm based in Itanagar.
The Warriors is one of the two new teams for PBL’S 2018 season beginning December 23. The other is Ahmedabad Smashers.
What could be more jarring for Beijing is that the Warriors’ chief executive officer is Bamang Tago, also the secretary of Arunachal Pradesh Badminton Association. China had denied a visa to Tago in November last year, preventing him – as team manager – from accompanying the Indian contingent to a major badminton event in Fuzhou.
The Chinese embassy denied Tago visa since Beijing claims Arunachal Pradesh as its own and calls it South Tibet. India trashes this claim.
Wang is one of the costliest players of the league, whose eight franchisees have been allowed to spend ~2.4 crore each on their teams and ~72 lakh on a player. Besides Wang, the Warriors has Chinese-origin Canadian Michelle Li and eight others, including six Indians.
Incidentally, there is a topbilled Chinese player, Tian Houwei, playing for the Delhi Acers in the current season.
Tago said the visa issue “still rankles” but getting Wang on board “just happened”. “Some people from beyond our borders might read too much into us signing Wang, but we believe politics or diplomacy should not be mixed with sports,” he said.
China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province and wants it to be part of it, but most Taiwanese want a separate nation. Taiwan administration had changed hands from the Dutch (1624-1661) to China’s Qing dynasty (1883-1895) before falling to Japan.