Badminton: nurturing future champions

In the past few years, several young shuttlers have broken into the national badminton scene. In addition to Olympians such as 2016 Rio silver medallist PV Sindhu, 2012 London bronze medallist Saina Nehwal, Parupalli Kashyap, Kidambi Srikanth, and doubles specialists Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponappa, youngsters such as siblings Sourabh and Sameer Verma, B Sai Praneeth, and Gayatri Gopichand have been setting the national circuit on fire.

The exemplary success that all these shuttlers have attained in various international tournaments has compelled the national media to take note of their achievements. Additionally, several corporate houses and business interests now consider badminton as a sport where young Indians can shine bright. The involvement of corporate houses in promoting badminton is evident in ventures such as the Premier Badminton League, where six franchises each from Delhi, Awadhe, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai compete in a fortnightly tournament.

Such franchise leagues serve more as a launching pad for senior-level shuttlers, who have been a part of the domestic circuit for some time. However, getting children involved in the game and turning badminton into something more than a hobby for them is a different mission entirely.

To this end, tournaments such as the PNB MetLife Junior Badminton Championship (JBC) have proven very effective. Started in 2015, JBC aims at promoting badminton at the grassroot level among children of five age categories, ie under-9, 11, 13, 15 and 17, for boys and girls. This year's edition will feature a scholarship prize worth Rs 3 lakh to the winners, runner-ups and semi-finalists in all 10 categories.

The third edition of the tournament, JBC 3, began on April 3 this year in the national Capital at Thyagaraj Stadium, with over 1,200 budding shuttlers – including underprivileged kids – signing up for the opening leg here. The Delhi leg of the knockout-style tournament concluded on April 7, with five girls and five boys finishing as winners in each age category.

JBC 3 is being organised in eight cities, namely New Delhi, Chandigarh (April 10-13), Indore (April 17-20), Mumbai (April 24-28), Bengaluru (May 4-7), Hyderabad (May 10-13), Guwahati (May 22-25) and Lucknow (May 30-June 1). Over 4,300 children have registered for the competition so far. The open-platform tournament, where any child is free to register in their respective age group, is being organised by insurance major PNB MetLife and Sara Foundation, an organisation engaged with identification, promotion and sustenance of sporting talent and prodigies across the country. In addition to recognising the national champions, the insurance major – as part of its CSR initiative – also conducted badminton camps in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Raichur and Gulbarga, to give an opportunity to talented underprivileged children to hone their skills through a one-year scholarship programme. The training camps were organised by CRY (Child Right and You).

The kids received training thrice-a-week for 10 months from professional coaches, along with equipment including badminton racquets, shoes and sportswear. The kids shortlisted on the basis of their performance in the camps will participate in different legs of JBC 3 and will get a chance to be among 16 winners of the coveted national badminton scholarship in underprivileged category.

The tournament's second edition JBC 2, held last year, was a major success, with over 5,800 young shuttlers registering and battling it out on the courts across eight cities – Delhi, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kozhikode, Lucknow and Guwahati.

Last year's 16 scholarship winning children, from economically backward background, included two from Andhra Pradesh, one from Telangana, two from Karnataka, two from Jharkhand, two from West Bengal, one from Delhi-NCR, five from Mumbai and one from Nashik. Pooja Khachare, one of the 16 winners of JBC 2, has been undergoing rigorous training to prepare for JBC 3. This year, she won the Girls Singles U-17 category title in the Mumbai leg.

Not all of these 16 winners were chosen on basis of their progress in JBC 2; some were chosen keeping in mind the immense potential they showed and the effort they put in at the training camps. By promoting many precocious children in the sport, the road ahead for India's badminton looks well-paved.