New Delhi: The Badminton Association of India (BAI) is contemplating to make mandatory participation for all national players for national competitions from next edition onwards after the top shuttlers from the country have been missing from the ongoing 86th Senior National Badminton Championship 2024.
The national championships is being played at the Karnataka Badminton Stadium in Bengaluru. The competition, which is scheduled from December 20 to 24, has returned to Bengaluru after nearly a span of 12 years. The nationals are held across two phases – the Inter-State-Zonal team competitions and the Individual competition.
One thing that has been talked a lot about is the non-participation of international players at the nationals. Barring the 21-year-old Tanisha Crasto, no other Paris Olympic-bound Indian shuttler is in action at the senior national event this season.
How does BAI take this as a challenge?
In a move to earmark the presence of the star shuttler in the prestigious domestic competition, the BAI has planned to make it compulsory for all the players to turn up from the next edition. BAI secretary Sanjay Mishra has cited injury problems and the exhaustion from BWF World Tours as the main reasons why some of the prominent players couldn’t play in Bengaluru.
“Probably from next year, National Championships will be mandatory. This year, top players have had a lot of tournaments. And some of them are injured. So we didn’t force any (of them to participate),” Sanjay Mishra told reporters recently in Bengaluru, as quoted by Sportstar.
The senior BAI official also mentioned why the body can only stage the national events at the end of the year given that the BWF season is to tight for them to ask their own players to make themselves available for the domestic event.
“As a player, you may win BWF Super 100, Super 300… but a National [title] means your name is in history,” he added.
The move mulled by BAI is a similar one taken from the national cricket body BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India). The board directed its top international players to ensure that they feature in the domestic events if they want to be on the radar for the selection at international events. Earlier this year, a couple of players were excluded from the central contract’s list after lack of interest to play domestic competitions.
The Badminton Association of India (BAI) is considering making participation in the National Badminton Championships mandatory for all national players starting next year. This follows the absence of several top Indian shuttlers from the 2024 edition in Bengaluru. Badminton Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
