Sri Lankan shuttlers in good form

Yasaratne GAMAGE

Sri Lankan shuttlers put up a pleasing performance to dominate Group Four in the Sudirman Cup 2011 badminton tournament which is now in progress in China.

The Sri Lanka team made a clean sweep and comprehensively beat the rest of their opponents, Israel, Iceland, Philippines and the Seychelles to emerge on top of Level Four.

Chandrika De Silva, Thilini Jayasinghe, Niluka Karunaratne, Dinuka Karunaratne, Lasitha Menaka, Samanthika Weerasinghe and Achini Ratnasiri were the players who represented the Sri Lanka team.

The Sudirman Cup is the World Team Badminton Championships held every two years and is one of the most prestigious titles for badminton. It is also the only Badminton World Federation (BWF) event for men and women competing together in national teams.

The cup has been named after Dick Sudirman, a former councelor and vice president of International Badminton Federation (IBF) and also a renowned Indonesian Badminton player and the founder of the Badminton Association of Indonesia (PBSI).

There are five matches in every round. Men's and women's singles, men's and women's doubles and mixed doubles.

The event was first hosted in 1989 in Jakartha, Indonesia, with 28 national teams. It now attracts more than 50 national teams. Only three nations have won the Sudirman Cup since its inception Indonesia once, Korea three times and China seven times. The championship became a biennial event with the first few competitions which consisted of single events, staged in conjunction with the World Championships.

The idea of a mixed team event first came up during IBF Council meetings in 1986 and by 1988 the IBF had accepted and approved the regulations for the competition to be staged in conjunction with the World Individual Championships.

The IBF accepted from the Badminton Association of Indonesia, a memorial to the late Dick Sudirman in the form of a cup to be known as the 'Sudirman Cup' and to be presented to the winners of the World Mixed Team Championship.

By the 8th Sudirman Cup in the Netherlands (2003), the event had grown sufficiently in world stature for it to become a stand-alone tournament in the world badminton calendar. Indonesia won the inaugural championship in 1989 while Korea won the next consecutive episodes. China entered the winning list in 1995 and had been unbeaten until 2005 when Korea snatched the trophy.

It was China again regained their lost prestige by winning the last two championships in 2007 and 2009. The long awaited Korea had to satisfy with the runners up title in the last tourney.

The 2011 championship the twelfth edition is being held from May 22 to 29 in Qingdao, China.

This year 33 countries are participating in four groups. The seedings for competing teams were based on aggregated points from the best players in the world ranking.

Group One consist of 12 elite teams where China, Denmark and Indonesia in the fore front. The second and third groups is a seeding of eight teams each while five teams are competing in the fourth group. Sri Lanka is in the fourth group with Philippines, Iceland, Israel and Seychelles. Sri Lanka has already surpassed Seychelles while Philippines overcame Israel.

The seven times winner China will no doubt keen on repeating the same while six times runners up Korea will put up a great effort to grab the title. The only non- Asian country to come closer to the title is Denmark who became runners up in 1999.

There is no prize money for Sudirman Cup. Shuttlers seek the prestige of playing for ones country. On the other hand the tourney is important to earn BWF World Ranking points and this is particularly important for countries in the lower groups in an Olympic Qualifying period.