THE sudden death of a 17-year-old Chinese badminton player recently, has raised a few eyebrows in the badminton fraternity.
Previously, we have only heard of footballers collapsing on the pitch but Zhang Zhijie’s demise is cause for concern.
The game of badminton is one that is played at a feverish pace.
A review needs to be done to look into the scoring format and also the rest period.
Since the game itself is energy sapping and there is hardly any time to recuperate in between points, a thought could be put to increasing the rest period during a set and in between sets so as to get the optimum performance out of the players.
The points system for the women’s matches needs to be given some thought as well.
A slight reduction in the scoring system would probably do a world of good for women’s badminton.
We do not want to witness any untoward incident happening to the women players as well before any move is made there after.
The umpires’ duty is no doubt a demanding one.
But, they could probably use their discretion a bit more to give the players more leeway during the course of the match. It would be all for the good of world badminton.
