Bengaluru: Over the past five years, the number of Indian star shuttlers featuring in the individual events at the Senior national badminton championship has dwindled sharply. The ongoing competition at the Karnataka Badminton Association (KBA) here is no different. Of the six Indian men ranked inside the top 50 in the BWF rankings, only Satish Kumar Karunakaran, ranked 45, is competing, while Anupama Upadhyaya (ranked 46) and Aakarshi Kashyap (47) are the top-ranked women players in fray.
As a result, Badminton Association of India (BAI) secretary general Sanjay Mishra recently said the federation in future could make the premier domestic event mandatory.
Weighing in on the issue, India’s chief coach Pullela Gopichand remarked, “It’s always a challenge when you want (top) athletes to play two circuits, international and national, or national and state. Ideally, there should be only one calendar,” he said here Sunday.
“…the importance of the national championship has gone down. How do we revive it, so that it becomes feasible for top players to play is something which needs to be thought about?,” he questioned.
Scheduling is one of the key reasons for top players not featuring in the nationals. With the competition played at the year’s end, it is internationally off-season and an ideal resting period for the players. It is also the phase during which many of them begin preparations for the next season, which starts in early January. For instance, the BWF calendar for 2025 begins with Malaysia Open (Super 1000, Jan 7) and followed by the India Open (Super 750, Jan 14).
With star players focusing on major international events, which offer bigger prize money and ranking points, how can a player be convinced to play in the nationals? “You must give them benefits. Making it mandatory is one way, but they could just come, walk the first day, lose a match and walk off. That’s not the purpose. So, you want them to come here prepared and perform. So, either the prize money needs to be at a point where it is motivating or certain things such as an honour or a facility should be there,” opined Gopichand.
He also suggested the duration of the competition be reduced to three days.
PLAYERS TURNING COACHES
Gopichand expressed his happiness with former players like Anup Sridhar, Arvind Bhat, Guru Sai Dutt and others, who have turned coaches. The 51-year-old hopes some of the current players take a similar route. “We need quality coaches to come back. When (HS) Prannoy, Satwik (Satwiksairaj Rankireddy), Chirag (Shetty) retire, I want them back in coaching. Last year, we had Sai Praneeth go to the US to coach. I don’t want my coaches to leave the country. We should give them enough salaries to stay back. We have big centres and we have enough players.”