Firstly can I say the IBF world rankings site is superb and offers a wealth of information allowing fans to track players progress. Looking at the current mens rankings a few pairs jump out at me as being (with no disrespect ) at an unrealistically high ranking. No.6 Shirley / Gordon NZL No.9 Han / Bach USA Plus there are many other pairs from "weaker" countries in the top 20. Now these pairs ranking are based on winning smaller tournaments in Australia or America/ Europe, generally when playing the top tournaments they lose to lower Danish/English pairs. Of course most fans know the rankings are often to be ignored at the big events but when seeding and qualification are based on ranking this can lead to uneven draws at the top events. SHould the rankings system be changed to get a truer picture of the top players position or if these pairs choose to support the lower tournaments and take the points on offer is that fair enough? Is it good because we see far more countries in the top rankings? A second point when a player loses form through injury should their previous high ranking be taken into account. For instance Gade and Rasmussen were seeded below the english players at the US open.
The ranking system is so new that the numbers haven't really "stabilized" yet. After a couple of more tournaments I think things will be back to "normal".
Not to be a stick in the mud, but I noticed that Han/Bach from the US beat the English pair of Boxall/Hurrell at the Danish Open. Granted Boxall and Hurrell aren't the top English pair, but going by the score (15/2 15/6), the game was not particularly close. They then lost in 3 sets to the pair that beat Anthony Clark/Nathan Robertson (also in 3 sets).
Ok, I take your point but I wouldn't put Clark/Roertson in the top 12 pairs, and Hurrel Boxall are a brand new english pair not even in the top 100 rankings, You would expect a genuine top 10 r to be beating the top 3 indo / Malaysian / Korean /Denamrk pairs regularly the ranking of the pairs I mentioned is totally based on their sucess away from the big tournaments.
Well, I guess the ranking game will never be perfect. And the rankings are never static - they're always changing. A better indication is a players length of time at a particular ranking position. As far as ranking tournaments in NZ/Australia go - the badminton season there is different to the northern hemisphere. All the tournaments there are over and will be for a while. As players progress in the northern hemisphere tournaments, they will overtake those from downunder. Besides, people generally know who the good players are despite the rankings. No-one would suggest that just because Geoff Bellingham (NZ) was ranked 60 or so places higher than Gopichand (IND), that he should have an easy win. I think sometimes, there's just a bit too much emphasis on the rankings. But if the top players did place a bigger emphasis on their rankings, then they also have the option of playing in more of the smaller tournaments to get easy ranking points. This wouldn't be all bad as then more people in the smaller badminton areas would get to see the (proper) top players in the world in action. We recently had the Oxfordshire Open tournament, a satellite tournament in the UK, which is the bottom tier of tournaments (going from Grand Slams, Challengers and then Satellites). The winner of the mens singles was Nic Kidd, who is ranked in the top 10 in England. Some would argue that he shouldn't be playing in Satellites as he's too good, but I was happy to see him play. It gives the rest of us a little reminder of what proper badders is all about.
Good points Kiwi, I wrote a lot about the problems in uk rankings events in the thread "Challengers in uk " Also in mens doubles Thilthorpe Kidd lost final but they won the first challenger. But that Oxford open still only offered 80 ranking points !
