Interesting comments…

It’s difficult to compare tennis and badminton. If you look at this years Wimbledon, the men’s game has changed a lot and there are more baseline rallies. This makes the game relatively easy on the eye of the TV viewer being able to watch two players slug it out. With games over relatively quickly, it also suits the attention deficit to a degree. Badminton is simply too fast compared to this. Bear in mind TV for many is entertainment and therefore viewers to not want to focus hard to watch. And that’s why badminton to the general public will never work.

Our scoring system isn’t difficult and I really can’t say how the players feel about potential changes. Everybody wants the sport to be more commercial and that’s why BWF are testing the scoring format. Sky Sports obviously don’t like this format and therefore the final game near sudden death shootout has been designed. Nobody can really say at the moment whether this system will work. I won’t know as I don’t have Sky, so won’t be watching the NBL. The players don’t excite me enough to go out of my way to watch.

I’m interested to see what happens with the other tested scoring system. I do not expect any changes to our game this year and it’s going to be interesting what results come out of the tests, if and when published. Will it impact on league badminton? Not for the immediate future because it may take an other year for Badminton England to adopt the change. After that it may take several years for leagues to adopt the new scoring system, if at all.

This is very much a sit back and let’s see what happens situation.

In the meantime, the World Championships are about to begin and I’m really looking forward to seeing quality badminton after the Commonwealth Games. I’m also ready for more commentary by Gill Clark and Morten Frost. They work well together.

Paul

This is a really good question and tough to answer.

A shorter game certainly favours the aggressive player. What will be essential is a good warm up and knock up to be ready to attack from the start. I think this will also encourage players to work harder on their defence, especially drive and block. It will be important to turn defence into attack as quickly as possible.

Will this change the game in league badminton? I’m not so sure. It may change results though as some players will not learn and therefore pay the price. The defender style player will struggle to win. Also those players with a weak attack will find it difficult.

Dominating the net and shutting out your opponents will become even more important and also the serve will remain the most important shot of the game. A good low serve is essential now and this won’t change. Return of serve professionally won’t change but for clubs, lifting to the rear court may be frowned upon.

With all of that said, I still believe there is a place for court craft and the ability to out think and out manoeuvre an opponent. In some respects this often overlooked skill may become important again.

I am the last person to hold onto the old scoring system if a new system is deemed to work better. However, how this will fit into a league structure is a different question and at the moment it’s anyone’s guess what impact it will have.

It’s good to debate these matters but we may be jumping the gun. Until we or our respective league clubs are asked to vote on the subject, it’s pure speculation whether it will happen.

Paul