Nagpur: The top Indian badminton players have been politely told by the Badminton Association of India that skipping the senior Nationals is not an option anymore. BAI is even willing to schedule the national championship according to their convenience.
BAI had gone out of its away this year to ensure that the top players participate in the Nationals at Nagpur by tweaking the tournament format to allow the singles stars a direct entry in the pre-quarters, and in the last eight for doubles, and also increased the overall prize money to Rs 60 lakh.
The presence of top players has meant that the tournament has attracted thousands of fans with the summit clash between PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal in women’s singles and Kidambi Srikanth and HS Prannoy in men’s singles likely to be played in front of a packed Mankapur Sports Complex on Wednesday.
It has also helped bring out the best among the youngsters who were keen to put their best foot forward against the top stars.
Packed international calendar
However, questions were already being raised as to whether the likes of Saina Nehwal, PV Sindhu and others would play the Nationals next year as they had already spoken about the hectic international schedule.
Even K Srikanth had spoken about the scheduling issue earlier in the day when asked whether he would play the Nationals again next year. “I will like to play the Nationals but it all depends on when it is scheduled and how the conditions are,” he told reporters.
When the question was posed to BAI president Dr Hemanta Biswa Sarma in the presence of some of these players at a media conference on Tuesday night, he made it very clear that the players will have to play and gave them the option to decide the time for the same.
“Players will decide when the competition will be conducted, Sarma said. “They will sit down and give us a three or four days slot [during] any time of the year. We will host the senior Nationals according to their convenience so that their international commitments are not compromised. I am sure they will continue to participate.
“Next year, it may not be in November. It may be in July or August or October, whenever our players are comfortable,” he added.
Scheduling a national championship would be a tough ask next year with the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games added to the already tight international calendar but BAI is confident that they would come up with a solution to that problem.
Even chief national coach Pullela Gopichand said as much. “If you see the next year’s scheduling, the tournaments start right from second week of January. We, as a country, actually have the toughest schedule before in addition to normal BWF (Badminton World Federation) tournaments. We play in Commonwealth and Asian Games too… The players will always find it difficult.
“But with the kind of innovative format, which has been thought of for the Nationals this year and also the kind facilities here, makes it attractive for players to come,” he added.
Playing Nationals vs training
There is no doubt that the players are extremely happy with the court conditions and facilities provided to them and many told stories of dismal conditions in earlier tournaments during informal communications to drive home the point as to why they began skipping the Nationals.
Though none of them were willing to come on record but given a choice most of these players, especially in men’s singles, would like to use the period for training. “The competition to get into the Indian team for major events like the Asian Games, CWG has got tough,” said a player who is in the world’s top 50.
“This means we need to really protect our international ranking. So when we get a break, we want to use it for training. The Nationals needs to be ideally held when we have a longer break.”
This time around, the players said they have hardly got time to train for the China Superseries Premier, which starts next week, and the Hong Kong Open following that.
The general consensus is that the best period to hold the Nationals would be January or February, or in July or August, as there is a long break before and after the World Championship.
But next year, even that would be difficult as the tweaked BWF schedule to accommodate Asian and Commonwealth Games has not left a window of opportunity during that period.
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