Indian Open badminton postponed New Delhi, Aug 28 (PTI) The Indian Open badminton event featuring a host of international stars and scheduled to take place in Hyderabad from September 4 was today postponed in the wake of the recent bomb blasts in the city. "We had to postpone the event as many teams had expressed concern due to the prevailing situation in Hyderabad after the blasts. It is likely to take place in January (7-13) now," Badminton Associaton of India President V K Verma said. International badminton stars from 15 countries were supposed to participate in the September 4-9 USD 150,000 showcase event which also had Olympic qualification points. The Malaysian team, fielding a strong 27 member contingent, were the first to express their concern after the blasts on Saturday that claimed 40 lives and then other teams like China, Japan, Korea etc also requested for a change in date. "The issue is not what we see the situation from here. The impression left in the minds of participating teams from Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Japan was that of anxiety. "We told them that the government will ensure fullproof security and the situation is coming back to normalcy, but they said they were suffering from anxiety and concern," he said. "This is an international tournament where top players were coming and they can play only when the mind is absolutely free. So, they requested us to postpone the event and change the dates of the tournament, Verma said. Olympic gold medallist Taufiq Hidayat of Indonesia and star Malaysian shuttler Lee Chong Wei, Mohd Hafiz Hashim and newly crowned World Champion Zhu Lin of China were among the top players to take part in the event. Verma, however, said that the postponement was not a setback and they will be able to rope in much bigger field next year. "We will have the tournament at the beginning of next year and we could have stronger participation. A lot of international stars and European players could come in that time."
BAI has no choice to prevent bad impact that probably happen following the incident. It will be tight schedule for January next year, there are 3 bdm tourneys in a row, India GP Gold-MAS SS-KOR SS respectively! Hmm, I guess top-shuttlers will concentrate in 2 SS tourneys.
Not a single newspaper I've read in the past few days has mentioned this... In fact, the Times of India published an article in which Gopichand 'assured the public that the tournament would go ahead as scheduled'. however, cooler, it seems you are right (I checked the BAI website)- its really sad how little news space is devoted to badminton...if a cricket series were to be canceled/postponed, it would be on the front page for 2-3 days...
After that article there was another in Times stating that the tourney was cancelled and that it was tentatively scheduled to Jan of next year.
From the BWF website - Yonex Sunrise India Open 2007 21 Sept 2007 THE request to have the US$150,000 2007 Yonex Sunrise India Open in January 2008 has been withdrawn. [FONT=Arial,] Anne Smillie, Badminton World Federation Chair of Events, confirmed this and said initially a request was made to organise the event on the week ending Jan 13, 2008. [FONT=Arial,][FONT=Arial,]The tournament was initially scheduled to be held in Hyderabad from 4 to 9 September at the Kotla Indoor Vijay Bhaskar Reddy SAP Stadium. [FONT=Arial,][FONT=Arial,]However, two bomb blasts one week before the tournament claimed some 42 lives, forcing the organisers to postpone the tournament due to security reasons. [FONT=Arial,][FONT=Arial,]“India has suffered a very difficult issue of security which had resulted in the postponement of the India Open GP Tournament,” said Anne. [FONT=Arial,][FONT=Arial,]“They had requested an alternative date, week ending 13 January 2008 and I was in the process of consulting with the affected parties. [FONT=Arial,][FONT=Arial,]“I have now been formally advised that India has withdrawn that request.” [FONT=Arial,][FONT=Arial,]The BWF would like to apologise to all for the inconvenience caused. [FONT=Arial,][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]
Can someone tell me why does a person with so much integrity to refuse a lucrative pepsi contract allow almost all Andhra juniors to cheat on age. It is a known fact that all Andhra juniors play one category below their age group. For eg., Rohit Yadav, the U/13 national champ is 16 (which puts him in U/19 age group, not even U/16). Most other players are at least 2-3 years overage. The cheating is so rampant that it has to be at association level and I cannot believe that Gopi is unaware. A dental check or TW2 test will reveal the truth, but then why would there be an intent to catch crooks when it may expose their own.