Almost a dozen years since it last stopped in Garden City, the National Senior Badminton Championships will return to Bengaluru with the latest edition starting on Wednesday.
India’s top second-tier talent will take part in the seven-day event, which will feature team championship matches on the first two days, followed by individual competitions.
In 2017, the Badminton Association of India (BAI) made a vigorous effort to revive the country’s premier domestic tournament. The top players took part and the prize money went up, and for two consecutive seasons, PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal clashed in the finals.
The tournament has once again become a training ground for young and upcoming players – the end of the season probably doesn’t help attract stars – but maybe that’s not a bad thing as badminton is now one of the most important sports in the country and the matches offer a chance to see the talent pipeline being built.
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The line-up will feature defending champions Anmol Kharb, Isharani Baruah and Tanvi Sharma – all three of whom helped India qualify for the quarter-finals of the Uber Cup earlier in the year – and the men’s squad will feature last year’s winner Chirag Sen, Ayush Shetty and Mithun Manjunath and Sai Prateek among the big names .
Interestingly, Ayush, Mithun and Sai Prateek are from Karnataka but will be going to the railways. Karnataka’s favorite women’s doubles pair of Shikha Gautam and Ashwini Bhat will be closely watched.
As many as 450 players have registered and will compete for a total cash prize worth ₹ 50 lakh. Of this, ₹10 lakh will be allocated for the team competition, which has seven entries each for both men and women. The singles winners will take home ₹3.25 lakh each, while the doubles winners will take home ₹3.45 lakh.
Teams:
Men: Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh, Railways and RBI
Women: Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Haryana, Assam, Railways and RBI.
