Badminton Bangalore

RBC, WBC is not just in Blood : I had studied about Red blood Cells ( RBC) & White blood Cells (WBC) in school. Then heard about their counts in case of blood tests. This being a season of Flus ( wat with dengue, pneumonia, swine flu making headlines everyday!!) i am sure there is a lot of RBC & WBC counts going on in labs. But I was doing another kind of count – that of RBC in WBC. In a purely badminton sense RBC means Red Badminton champions, WBC means world badminton championships! RBC is my word for chinese champions (red being their flag color!). In case you dont like China, you have the option of reading RBC as Real Badminton Champions!

The Build-Up: I was aware of WBC in August when I followed Taufeek Hidayat winning Indian Open few months back. He had promised to return for WBC. Public memory is short, esp when it comes to sport other than cricket! Being one of such public, I had conveniently forgotten about it, but then came Saina’s Super series win. The media gave a lot of coverage to WBC as she was our trump card for a podium finish. As days approached I was  among many badminton loving aam aadmi’s to get my share of action on DD sports. ( there were reports that ticket prices were kept high to keep away spectators -another case of  “it happens only in India”!! )

Fear-Factor: Just days short of WBC came the fear of H1N1. There was speculation the tournament will be called off. But that news had an infant mortality – dying down even before it could spread. But then the Devil hired the services of English team to try & tarnish WBC being held at India. The very ‘Courageous’ English, who once had 1/3rd of the globe as their colony ‘chickened out’ of WBC citing ’security reasons’  based on LeT threat. Now I dont know how they get threat perceptions directly from LeT. We had seen England acting as bad losers in many cricket matches, now they were bad losers even before they played here. Now that the tournament has gone without any incident the BWF shud take English Badminton to task & put fines on them. When all others were safe why dont they feel safe? English team were no medal prospects in their own ratings, so they chose this way to be in the news. Was it fear of LeT or fear of getting mauled by the Chinest Tigers?

On the last day Home minister Chidambaram entered the venue, buying tickets like any other aam aadmi – there by sending a strong message that everything was safe. He echoed what any self-respecting Indian had to say “I was burning when England pulled out of WBC” !!

The Winners : Badminton In India was the foremost winner as the game got much needed boost & coverage thru this event. kudos to DD sports for beaming it all live. Just a week prior to WBC, DD Sports had made our junior mens volleyball team household names, by showing their spoils at the Wolrd junior volleyball championships at Pune – now DD sports did the same by taking the game to every household. I am sure many are inspired by the champs & try to get champion shots in their armoury, like I did

chinese supremacy was more than clear with them taking four gold and three silvers in total. The only event without a chinese in the final was mixed doubles. Here are results in a glance:

1)Men’s Singles : Lin Dan outclassed Jin Chen 21-18, 21-16 to complete a hat-trick of world titles

2) Women’s Singles: Lu Lan defeated Xie Xingfang 23-21, 23-12 to take the Gold.

3) Men’s Doubles: Cai Yun and Fu Haifen of China won by 21-18, 16-21, 28-26 in the final against Jae Sung – Yong Dae of South Korea.

4) Women’s Doubles: Yawen Zhang and Tingting Zhao toppled Shu Cheng and Yunlei Zhao 17-21, 21-17, 21-16.

5)Mixed Doubles: Denmark’s Thomas Laybourn and Kamilla Rytter Juhl defeated defending champion Nova Widianto and Liliyana Natsir of Indonesia 21-13, 21-17.

Indian Challenge: While Saina was India’s strongest bet WBC did provide greater exposure to not just other Indian players, but also for the game itself. Saina showed what she is made of by fighting of chicken-pox & getting match to match fitness. Its debabtable if she would have made it to semis at least, but for the pox attack. With her losing in quarters, the indian challenge ended at WBC. Other Indian players did showcase themselves making use of their opporutnity. I watched many matches having Indian players & Chetan, bhat, Jwala-Diju pair did show promise. I too picked up some nice shots the champs played thru the tournament & was able to try it at my time at the nets – hope practice makes me perfect !