Head coach feels lucrative prize money & better scheduling could draw top starsBENGALURU: 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.
India head 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?" 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 offseason 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.
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," said Gopi.
He also suggested the duration of the competition be reduced to three days.