Shambolic shuttle showpiece

 Shambolic shuttle showpiece

The Sri Lanka National Badminton Championships has been embroiled in chaos just a day before the country’s highest profile badminton event is to begin, sources told “Daily Mirror”.
Sri Lanka Badminton Association (SLBA), which conducts the event, had not released the seedings or a draw for the tournament till last evening putting all the players in a difficult position.
The SLBA which has been plagued by controversies has failed to find a sponsor so far for the tournament and no prize money has been announced yet. If there is no prize money on offer, that will be a deviation from the age old practice at the nationals.The showpiece event has also been hit by the absence of several high profile players such as former National champion and Sri Lanka’s representative at this year’s Olympic Games Thilini Jayasinghe and the current national champion Achini Ratnasiri who has won the title for the past three years in a row. Also missing is top player Upuli Samanthika.
Jayasinghe’s absence has raised eye brows as she has entered both women’s doubles and mixed doubles but her entry for women’s singles has been rejected by the organisers as it had been late by about an hour, sources said.

A well known badminton analyst told “Daily Mirror” that the circumstances surrounding the rejection of Jayasinghe’s entry has led to many speculations.

“Jayasinghe represented Sri Lanka at Olympics clearly not because she was the best Sri Lankan player. There are so many other local players who were ranked ahead of her locally. It was only because she had played in the most number of overseas tournaments and had collected enough international ranking points. So, a player who sent her entry correctly for so many international events and so many local tournaments in the past couldn’t send her entry before the deadline for the nationals. Can you believe that? It is just an excuse to avoid being humiliated by other really good local girls. She’s just dodging competitions,” alleged the analyst.

SLBA failed to announce the nationals through media and as a result there is a drop of around 40 percent in entries for this year’s tournament, sources added. Most of the media and newspapers are still unaware that the Badminton Nationals would start tomorrow.

The poor planning and scheduling of the tournament also showed the incompetence of Badminton officials, sources pointed out.

The Junior National Championship ended less than two weeks ago, and some top junior players went for an Asian tournament in China last Friday and came back only yesterday while another junior team is to fly to Japan on October 25 for the World Junior Championships. Cramming the Nationals in between would obviously put the star junior players at a difficulty.  

(www.dailymirror.lk)