IBL 2013: The highs and lows of the league stage

The league stage of the inaugural edition of the cash-rich Indian Badminton League got over on Tuesday. The 14-days of action received a heart-warming response from the badminton lovers as most stadiums were filled to near capacity and were treated to some really high quality badminton.

Firstpost takes a look at some of the highlights of the league stage:

Saina proves that she is THE queen of Indian badminton

The IBL started with the talk of whether world badminton championship bronze medallist PV Sindhu can upstage Saina in their first competitive clash on the second day of the tournament. Saina not just resoundingly beat the youngster, she provided a master class to all her opponents by maintaining an all-win record in the league stage.

Sindhu on the other hand suffered a reversal even against Carolina Marin of Banga Beats and was pushed to the wall by Arundhati Pantawane of Krrish Delhi Smashers.

Among the other icon players, Lee Chong Wei remained unbeaten in the three singles matches and one doubles match he played, while P Kashyap was definitely below par and lost three of his five matches.

Apart from Saina, only the men’s doubles combination of Kien Keat Koo and Tan Boon Hoeng went unbeaten throughout the league stage.

Scheduling needs to be looked into from next year

While the organisers and team owners would be happy that many people were interested in watching the matches in the stadium, the 8 PM start for the marquee game put many people off.

Every tie would end up going well beyond midnight and it was very common for spectators to start leave the stadium after the women’s singles, which used to be the second match of the contest, and by the time the mixed doubles was played only a handful people were left in the stadium.

May be a 6 PM start would be an ideal choice from next year.

The Replacement policy leaves a lot of questions unanswered

The lack of clarity over the replacements almost derailed the entire tournament when Krrish Delhi Smashers threatened to forfeit their last league encounter against Banga Beats when they were informed that their opponents would be fielding Jan O Jorgensen of Denmark instead of Hun Yu.

Earlier, the Governing Council had allowed Awadh Warriors to replace Thailand’s Sapsiree with mixed doubles specialist Pia Bernadeth.

The Badminton Association of India and its commercial partner Sporty Solutionz needs to understand that a tournament of this stature cannot be run with ad-hoc rules with the Governing Council making any exceptions at will.

The curious case of K Maneesha

While many Indian players like Saurabh Verma, B Sai Praneeth showed that they could punch above their weight when given an opportunity, some players ended up getting a princely sum for just warming the benches.

The Awadhe Warriors, who bought Maldives International champion K Maneesha for $26000, fielded her in just one match and then dumped her for Pia.

One fails to understand the logic behind buying the player at almost six times her base price if the coaching staff was not confident about playing her.