IBL 2013: Organiser's flip-flop leads to Delhi Smashers protest

Krrish Delhi Smashers almost threatened to walk out of the inaugural edition of the Indian Badminton League on Sunday in protest against the organiser’s decision to allow a replacement player for Banga Beats ahead of their final league clash in Bangalore.

Delhi Smashers’ contention was that the replacement of Hong Kong’s Hun Yu by Jan Jorgensen of Denmark was informed to them only a few minutes before the start of the tie. The pandemonium that followed after the Delhi outfit refused to enter the court delayed the start of the match by 15 minutes and play could resume only after Banga Beats agreed not to field Jorgensen in any of the five matches.

The Smashers were upset since the last minute change put them in a tight spot in a must win encounter. IBL may be a team event but every individual match is a straight contest between the players and no team could afford to let go a point as they occupied the bottom two spots in the standings.

Going strictly by the rule book, there was nothing wrong in Banga Beats replacing the injured Hun Yu with Jorgensen. Even in BWF tournaments like the Sudirman Cup, a replacement is allowed even at the last minute provided the new player is ranked lower than the one being left out due to injury.

The Dane is ranked a place below Yu in the international ranking and the replacement was approved only a few minute before the Smashers were officially informed by the referee.

Considering the above circumstances, the IBL governing council should have taken a firm stand and asked the Delhi team to take the court. But that did not happen and the only reason the IBL organisers had to pacify the Delhi Smashers was because they had themselves done a flip-flop about the rules in the past under the pretext that the show must go on and the visitors were peeved because they were at the receiving end for the second time in four days.

The IBL Governing Council had allowed then bottom placed Awadhe Warriors to replace their Thai recruit Sapsiree with Indonesia’s Pia Zebadiah Bernadeth ahead of their clash against Delhi Smashers by sidestepping the rules for replacements.

Bernadeth, a doubles specialist, is ranked 11 places above Sapsiree in women’s doubles and 125 places above her in mixed doubles and hence should have been ineligible as a replacement player. But the Governing Council used its discretionary power to allow Warriors to draft in Pia.

The combination of Pia and Markis Kido, ranked ninth in the world, have been undefeated since then and have brought the team back in contention for a semi-final spot.

However, the Governing Council’s flip flop with the rules had started a few days after the players’ auction when they allowed Awadhe Warriors to sign Danish doubles specialist Mathias Boe to replace Thailand’s Maneepong Jongjit, who was banned by the Badminton World Federation for his involvement in the brawl during the Canadian Open.

According to the replacement rules informed verbally to the teams during the auction, any team seeking a replacement could only buy a player from the reserved pool having the same base price or lower than the player going out.

However, Boe’s base price was $50,000, which was brought down to $25000 on his request. However, Jongjit’s base price was $10,000 and the Governing Council also allowed Awadhe Warriors to club the $16000 they had left unspent during the auction, thereby clearing the way for them to sign Boe.

The teams are still not sure whether the replacement players would be part of the squad for the next year as well or the original player will have to return in 2014 as the original contract with players is for two years.

While one does not wish to be critical of the IBL organisers given that this is the first year of the tournament and there would be teething troubles, their failure to provide written guidelines regarding the auction process and replacements to the teams is inexplicable.