Indian badminton players welcome world body's decision to cancel events
CHENNAI: When the Badminton World Federation (BWF) announced its revamped calendar for 2020 in May, it seemed extremely ambitious. The world body said they intended to restart with Hyderabad Open, a BWF Tour Super 100 event, on August 11. In all, they had slotted 22 events from August till the end of the year. In an intensive sport like badminton, that schedule earned the ire of the players.
"Twenty-two tournaments in five months!" was Parupalli Kashyap's reaction on Twitter.
"This is utterly pathetic scheduling," chirped HS Prannoy.
"How can someone schedule tournaments like this," added Sai Praneeth. "The players will have to be very cautious since the risk of getting injured will be high," was Viktor Axelsen's summation.
These emotions voiced up and down the badminton spectrum across the world. Fast forward two months and a bit and the only thing BWF has been doing is cancelling events from the revamped calendar.
It has made eight more press statements, all dealing with cancelling or postponing. The latest, on Wednesday, saw BWF cancel four more events — Taipei Open, Korea Open, China Open and Japan Open. BWF secretary general Thomas Lund said: "These decisions to cancel tournaments are made in the best interest of the health of the players, spectators, volunteers, and member associations. We are deeply disappointed to have to cancel tournaments, but feel that the well-being of everyone involved is most important at this time."
Nothing till October 13
This effectively means the next scheduled tournament on the World Tour is the Denmark Open from October 13. When football, cricket, motorsports and golf have all had professional events amid the pandemic (professional tennis is going to resume next week), why has badminton failed to start its revamped calendar?
The answer is simple enough: all those events have had one major advantage over badminton. They have all been held in Europe where the pandemic has shown signs of slowing down. Travelling is easier in Europe where some flights have resumed and quarantine regulations have been eased.
It was a point touched upon by HS Prannoy. "Most of the sports that have opened up are in Europe where travelling is easy," he told The New Indian Express. "Also, you will have to look at quarantine rules and travel rules. Like, travelling out of India is going to be difficult maybe even for the next two months. And it looks likely that you will lose a month in isolation to play in only one tournament. I think it's a good decision by the BWF to cancel every tournament in September."
Kashyap sang from the same hymn sheet.
"If you ask for my personal opinion, I don't think we should have tournaments this year. Am I frustrated that more meets have been cancelled? The answer is no," he said. "Even if the events had been held, we may not have been able to travel. I think I would need around two months of just training before being ready to play in a tournament. We are yet to start training.
"That's something other countries have started. The Taipei team has been training for 2-3 months, Indonesia I don't think ever stopped... the Denmark team restarted training one-and-a-half months ago. As far as I am concerned, playing matches is secondary. I first need to restart training," he went on to add.