Badminton eyes August 11 restart, Indians unhappy
NEW DELHI: International badminton, frozen since mid-March because of the Covid-19 pandemic, is scheduled to resume on August 11 with the Hyderabad Open. Badminton World Federation (BWF) announced a revamped calendar for the year on Friday with several tournaments cancelled or rescheduled.
The calendar aims to pack in 22 tournaments in five months with the season-ending World Tour Finals in Guangzhou from December 16-20. India will host two more tournaments, Syed Modi India International (November 17-22) in Lucknow and India Open, originally scheduled in March, in New Delhi from December 8-13.
Global badminton came to a standstill after the All England championships in mid-March. Among the 10 events cancelled are the Singapore Open and Badminton Asia Championships. The German, Swiss and Australian Opens have been suspended and await ‘suitable replacement dates’.
Indian players criticised the new schedule and were anxious about travel. “This is a stupid schedule. People are saying to reduce travel and we’ll be doing the opposite,” India’s top men’s player B Sai Praneeth said. “How can someone schedule tournaments from August? Nobody has started full-fledged training. Some countries haven’t even started practice and 22 continuous tournaments in 5 months!”
The world No.13 said the calendar would be too much even in normal times. “Whatever you cancelled, you’ve added in these five months; it’s not correct. BWF has to think about Olympic qualification first,” Praneeth added.
BWF has cautioned there are no guarantees the new plan would work. “It is a condensed calendar but we are confident this provides the framework to allow us to start again when it is safe and logistically possible,” BWF secretary general Thomas Lund said in a statement.
“It is a packed calendar. It will be tough to follow. We’ll go by what the Badminton Association of India (BAI) and the local government says. We (Telangana) have a lockdown till the end of the month and have a clear directive that no sports activity should resume till further notice. We have a plan (for resuming training) but will have to wait and see if the state government will open up the stadiums on June 1,” said national coach Pullela Gopichand.
Chirag Shetty, world No10 doubles pair with Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, said: “For players to come from different parts of the world will be difficult, I was thinking they might start in October as the Covid-19 cases are on the rise in India.”
The 2014 Commonwealth Games champion Parupalli Kashyap was also anxious. “What about regulations relating to quarantine, immigration and international flights? Will we be quarantined in the country holding the tournament and at home on return?”
Some academies and national centres in China, Taiwan, France and Denmark have resumed training in batches, with strict precautionary measures, while others still wait.
In India, the Centre has cleared sports in stadia, but the Telangana government—Hyderabad is Indian badminton’s epicentre—has extended the lockdown till May 31. “Right now there’s no assurance whether we will start training tomorrow or a week later as cases are still increasing here,” added Kashyap.
Shetty said a month’s training to regain fitness and 15 more days to get into tournament mode would be ideal. “We can’t rush into things. When someone is injured, they can take it slowly. Since our bodies are fit, when we get to the court we feel like we can go and play; that’s when chances of getting an injury increases.”
Olympic bronze medallist, Saina Nehwal, said tennis officials have not scheduled tournaments until October. HS Prannoy tweeted: “Could have kept a few more and made it 25 instead. Good job.”