Have more tournaments at one venue: Gopichand to BWF
INDIA’S national badminton coach Pullela Gopichand wants BWF to come up with ‘radical’ solutions to restart the sport smoothly in a post Covid-19 world, suggesting that conducting more tournaments at a single venue could be the way forward.
In a bid to salvage the international circuit, the governing body had postponed important events such as the Thomas and Uber Cup Final (October 3-11), besides asking for fresh slots from respective countries, including India, to conduct the suspended Olympic qualifiers.
’My concern is that, you are trying to shift the dates, probably there needs to be a change in thinking. If the same thing continues, and the whole entourage is travelling again to different countries then it is again risking players,’ Gopichand said.
Shuttlers travel almost every week to a new tournament during the badminton season. Gopichand said this should change.
‘I would say, planning of the tournaments has to be such that players can actually stay at one place and play more number of tournaments. It could be the next normal,’ he said.
There is speculation that the sport might initially return without fans in the wake of the global health crisis.
Gopichand believes one way of going about things is to segregate the players on the basis of their respective formats- men’s singles, women’s singles and doubles -- and then conducting tournaments in three different countries simultaneously.