The Badminton World Federation is again looking to change the scoring system, from a 21-point-three-game format to five games of 11 points. They have been experimenting with the points system for the last 15 years. They tried seven points, then 21 points, and now 11 points. In my opinion, the 21-point system is working decently and there is no need to fiddle around with it.
The BWF feels the matches are becoming too long. They want to compress everything within three hours and perhaps television has a role to play. There are five finals, and maybe the TV companies said they can give only 3-4 hours for all the matches. If that’s the case then it is very unfortunate because TV is dictating terms.
Shortening the game duration is not in the best interests of the sport. A sport like football or tennis has never compromised on length, and the popularity of these sports has not diminished at all. In tennis, the big events like the Grand Slams, which have a best-of-five-sets format, are never compromised. In other tournaments, it’s a best of three but still the scoring format remains the same.
The BWF should not mess with the big tournaments such as the world championships and the Superseries. You can introduce the new scoring system in the Challengers and Series-level tournaments.
The three main popular events in badminton are men’s singles, women’s singles and men’s doubles. If at all you want to experiment with the scoring, do it for the paired events, but not where an individual person’s skill is tested.
Badminton is a very technical and physical sport, so if you take away the skill aspect of the sport then it will become just about smashing. You will take away the endurance aspect of the game. The physical and mental parameters of players will not be tested.
No shortage of excitement
The BWF says it wants to increase suspense and excitement in matches through this new scoring format. But in my opinion there is no shortage of excitement even now. Nobody says a five-and-a-half hour tennis match is boring. Will anyone say that a one-and-a half-hour badminton match is boring?
Matches like PV Sindhu vs Nozomi Okuhara last year will never take place with this system. It will be like Twenty20 cricket, which is a lottery. But cricket still has followers for all three formats. I would give the International Cricket Council credit for keeping all three formats.
The BWF should listen to the world’s top coaches. The problem with badminton is that 90% of the top coaches from the Far East countries can’t express their views in English. The language is a problem so they aren’t able to communicate and put things across well. Everything is controlled by the federations and that’s the big bane of world badminton.
The other aspect is that the BWF goes and asks players like Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan about these things – players who are on the verge of retirement and want to prolong their careers. So if you ask them if they want this new system, they will say yes because they feel they can still survive with shorter matches. None of them have the best interest of the sport at heart. They are not looking at it in the long term.
I do agree with one of the proposals about reducing on-court coaching as it reflects poorly on the athlete. When you get a question paper in an exam hall, will your professor come and give you tips? In tennis, you cannot even make eye-contact with your coach when you are playing. Coaches talking to the players during intervals is fine but you should leave them alone while playing and let them deal with the situation on their own. That really tests the calibre of the players, their physical and mental strengths are tested.
But overall I’ll be very sad if they introduce these absolutely stupid measures. The saddest part is nobody is there to ask the questions. Nobody including reporters, understands the sport properly. In India, everybody knows the nuances of cricket, so they ask questions. But in badminton, nobody knows much about the sport. So they get away with all these stupid things.
I think the BWF is just running out of ideas.
– As told to Jaideep Vaidya