India will host another GP event The BAI annouced in a press conference during the IO that the intl challenger held in December every year is now being upgraded to a GP event.... This means two strong international caliber tournaments for India in a year. Also the BAI president said that hosting the WorldChamp's, the CommonWealth will put up an infrastructure(which is already failrly decent for badminton) in place to see India get a SuperSeries event by 2011....
abedeng: ashwini ponappa(the photogenic girl) whom we met is now going to partner Jwala G. a little note on her at this link : http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68064 Jwala & Shruti have decided to split up as a pair(which is actually sad) but have been asked by the BAI to continuecompeting together till Sudirman Cup. How sensible this is, is quite questionable after their semifinal performance. Shruti may be partnering Aparna Balan in the near future...
Thats good...I think INA is asking another GP also...in this way..we hope more independent players will be...
guess as the international calendar starts to incooperate more tournaments as more locations want to host events, moreplaying options are presented to players. moreover a larger pool of players from all nations can be encompassed. sending them across events will give them the xposure of the rigours of being on the circuit. the dbl whammy though is the quality and caliber at tournaments as all events will obviously not attract top talents and commercial interests may also effect the longevity ans sustainance of certains tournaments.
Erk, I thought Ashwini has potential in singles? What about that? She did beat Fu Mingtian ...... By this time she must decide on her specialization, doubles or singles and not both. As for Shruti/Jwala partnership, why not do the split now instead of waiting for Sudirman Cup? There is no advantage to be gained by India.
ha ha, no its not a guy fight jwala is with chetan anand & shruti is with former indian international nikhil kanetkar and all 4 are very strong as couples. the rift is more an issue b/w the girls.its suprising that the partnership of 8+ years does not want to sit down and resolve it. its a loss for indian badminton as they are clearly miles ahead for any WD pair currently playing & representing India.
absolutely abedeng, ashwini has the potential and spark to make it in the singles version and as her mom told us the girl has a passion for singles but i think the move has been triggered bcoz of her shift of base to HYD from bangalore. her mental strenght in matches is what her coaches at Prakash's academy have always been commenting on and moreover the commitment of her current dbls partner "nitya sosale" to keep playing competitively is still an open issue.....
Same with INA WD pair....Vita Marissa/Greysia...they did very well..beating Chinese WD, etc then they call it quit also....
I think she is one the girls that I saw in Tangkas...India Federation sent those girls twice to Tangkas to practice....
If the approach is eventually to liberalize badminton tournament registrations, ie. players get to select, choose and register to play, this could still work. Practically all the strong nations can break their squads into 2, and each team going to selected tournaments and thus strength of representation is balanced. Independent players who wish to join should be able to without going thru their BA. Also, this gives less reason for Badminton Associations (eg. BAM) not to invest in sending juniors to more tournaments. As exposure is gained, the net effect should be more high quality players in the long run. However, I do believe that BWF should reduce and rationalize tournament grades. We have too many, Super Series, GP Gold, GP, International Series, Satellite etc. This way, each tournament hosted can have an reasonably good standard.
Hopefully in 2011, we may see 4 Super Grand series, equivalent to Grand Slam..and there is a talk also about Badminton league in Asia then the best one against Europe..but with so many tournaments plus China League as well...it is going to be tough to organize it...only BIG $$$ will attract best players...
after the sham of one tournament in the entire year for the domestic circuit, the BAI has planned 8 junior ranking and 5 senior ranking events for this calendar year. centres like cochin, bangalore, nellore, indore will definetly put up good tournaments but the commitments of the north indian state associations will be worth a watch also a few of the indian players have commented that they have had to enter too many tournaments to make ranking points giving them notime to train. Arvind Bhat for example is not playing ABC and is going in for a much due 6 week training programme as he preps for Sudirman
Hmm.. ..hmm, could he be hiding something underneath that hat??.. Thanks again for sharing the pics, Abang Din & avataar! Esp. seeing a pic of avataar!..Should be a very good rendezvouz, again, come August and hopefully we'll see those tasty Indian food pics!
Expanding badminton into club competition format rather than country vs country can only be feasible when big sponsors like Nike/Adidas/Reebok/Puma are willing to invest in badminton like they do in tennis/football/basketball/track n field/rugby. And the reality is that these big sponsors will only come in when the sport has some semblance of shuttlers from the western nations being successful. As of now, badminton is being too dominated by Asians namely China followed by Indonesia, Korea, Japan and the great boleh nation, Malaysia bringing up the rear. Like it or not, this is a real world we live in. It is all about marketing at the end of the day. I personally feel BWF need to tweak the regulations/format/gameplay a little more to give the western nations some form of an advantage because when their shuttlers are successful and the game being less dominated by the Asians, the big sponsors like Nike & co will come in. If BWF have to adjust the size of the court, I say so be it! And when this happen, prize money will no longer be USD$13,000 for the MS, it may go up ten times or more. This effect will benefit the game and all in the long run, shuttlers will be able to earn more as true professionals and fans will witness a more dynamic sport rather than the usual China being the big daddy. In the long run, I am for badminton being organised along the lines like tennis. No more country v country thingy unless it is the Thomas/Uber Cup (and both T/U cup should be held every 4 years). Shuttlers are 100% pro, their livelihoods depends on how they perform in the badminton circuit. They more they win, the more they earn. No more subsidies or etc etc etc. Again, this can only happen if BWF allow the western nations to make some inroads into the game. Nothing wrong in tweaking the game for the benefit of the sport in the long run. Fifa did it with the back pass rule - to encourage attacking football.
^^Pretty much..^^ ..as brought up & echoed many times in these threads, below. Check out the first thread: http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22188 http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27352 http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53155 http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59842 http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20904 http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39016 http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33760
