BONNIE SPORT

2006 champions Malaysia are overwhelming favorites for the team gold in the badminton event at the Commonwealth Games, in Delhi, while England and hosts India are likely to contend for silver.

Twenty teams in all are set to take part in the badminton events, and they are divided into four round robin groups; seeded teams India, Malaysia, England and Singapore belong to different groups of five teams each.

Malaysia have been placed in Group A, which also has Australia, Nigeria, Seychelles and Isle of Man; Group B comprises Singapore, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Northern Ireland and New Zealand; Group C will see England, Uganda, Canada, Mauritius and Falkland Islands vying with one another; in Group D, apart from hosts India, Scotland, Kenya, Barbados and Wales are the other four teams. The top two teams from each round robin group will advance to the next round.

In the 2006 Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne, Australia, Malaysia won the gold medal, while England won the silver and India finished third and took home the bronze. Playing in front of a huge crowd of cheering home fans, India will at least aspire for silver, at the New Delhi event.

In the men’s event, the Malaysian effort will be led by the world’s top ranked player Lee Chong Wei. Indian players P Kashia and Cretan an and will need to get past the England players before they can match their might against the Malaysian players and aim for gold.

In the women’s doubles event, India is represented by Paraná Balkan and Jalap Gutter, while their mixed doubles pair is Gutter and V Dijon. The latter, which have a world ranking of 12, will have to contend with the top ranked England pair of Jenny Wall work and Nathan Robinson if they want a shot at gold.

But India can justly consider them as favorites to take the gold medal in the women’s singles event, represented as they are by the world number two Sauna Newhall. The Hyderabad girl has gone from strength to strength in recent years, and a Commonwealth Games gold medal appears to be just reward for this immensely talented 20 year old, at this stage of her thriving career.

The Sire Fort Sports Complex has five match courts and three warm up courts, and can hold 4,748 spectators. The badminton event to be held at the complex promises to be a mouth watering affair for Indian badminton aficionados. The event will be played between October 4 and 14.

There are basically 3 main factors to successfully playing Badminton.

First, you have to move to get to the shuttle, so your Badminton footwork has to be good. Secondly, you have to be able to hit the shuttle, and thirdly, it has to be hit to where you want it to go.

Basically if you can’t get to where the shuttle is/will be, then all the training and drills on shot selection practice and tactics are utterly useless!

Fast Badminton footwork is crucial and so is the right starting position. To be able to move from a static position, your knees must be slightly bent and your weight on the balls of your feet so that your heels are barely in contact with the ground. For a right handed player, your feet should be in a ’10 to 4′ clock position, ’20 to 2′ for you lefties.

Your feet should be placed apart so they are ‘outside’ your shoulders. To check this, assume your normal stance and have a quick look down. Check this, I’ll bet your stance is not quite wide enough.

With only a small upper body movement you should be able to ‘fall’ in any direction. Any movement around the court is dictated by your ability to move your feet, so both readiness and balance are crucial.

In game play a different more pronounced stance may need to be used depending on the state of play. For example if you expect to receive a smash you’ll need a wide (and squat) stance in order to reach or ‘dig out’ the smash return.

In short and long play your Badminton footwork will change and you’ll need a narrower and longer front to back starting stance because the necessary movement will generally be in those directions.

The next time you take to the court… look down, have a look at your feet and give some thought to what is or is not going on with them, you’ll find that improving your Badminton footwork really does make a difference to your game if you give some thought and attention

If the favorite shot of most players is the smash then the most popular question must be – ‘how to improve your smash in badminton’

So let’s address this question head on.

There are basically 2 aspects to hitting a good smash. They are direction and power. But to get both these right, you also need to hit the shuttle at the right point and also be in the right place at the right time.

In this article I’ll deal briefly with all of these points because really to know how to improve your smash in Badminton, you need to be able get each of these elements right or at the very least gets them better.

Firstly, getting the right direction to the smash. This comes down to court awareness and the position of your body and leading arm. Get any of these wrong and you won’t hit the part of the court you were aiming for.

Secondly to get more power, you need the strength and power in the muscles that contract in order to play the shot, so the shoulders and forearm muscles need to be worked. To help keep balance and direction strong core muscles are also vital for stability.

Thirdly you need to hit the shuttlecock at the right point. To do this you should always be behind the shuttle, so that you make contact with it directly in front of you, ideally hit at the highest point forwards of your racket shoulder.

Your wrist should be ‘cocked’ or bent backwards before the shot and then snapped forwards at the point of impact to hit the shuttle with maximum power. This should resemble a whipping action.

Finally in order to get in to the right position, you need the fitness and speed to be able to move in front of the shuttlecock to be able to hit it properly.

To do this you’ll also need to ensure that your feet are in a ‘front to back’ formation with your weight forwards so that the thrust can be made from the back leg which will propel you forwards as you hit and follow through with the smash.

One final tip that you can use for developing power in your smash is to try watching the racket actually hit the shuttlecock, this way you might be able to see where things are going wrong.

Have you ever struggled to return a shot if the shuttle was hit toward the backcourt area? Most of the time, it is tiring, if not difficult, to return a shot targeted at the backcourt, especially if you are positioned near the net, or if the shuttle moves at a high speed. It can be frustrating if this happens to you, and sometimes it will leave you feeling helpless and discouraged, thinking: “how can I return such a shot?”

One of the ways to return a shot to the backcourt is to get into position quickly. For a right handed player receiving a shot to the right backcourt area, the first step is to turn the body in such a way that the torso faces toward the right side of the court and to make a small step with the right foot so that the right leg is positioned toward the area where the shuttle is anticipated to land. After this initial step, the left foot crosses the back/front of the right foot and the whole body begins to move toward the anticipated landing area.

Then, the right foot takes one more step. At this point, depending on where the shuttle is, the player can already hit the shuttle, or, make a smash or jump smash. If the player chooses to already hit the shuttle, the toe should be pointed away from the center of the court (which is the returning position) to enable the player to return quickly. If the player will follow a smashing process instead, the right foot should end up in front of the body pointing toward the center with the left foot behind and slightly stretched, again to enable the player to return quickly.

One of the most important parts of this process is the very first turn. If you do this part correctly, it will be easier for the rest of the process to follow. Also remember that while the process is described as a series of steps, the entire movement should be smooth and continuous.

This type of footwork can be modified to fit the situation. One alternative will be to jump early with the left foot, instead of taking one more step with the right foot. Jumping and hitting the shuttle high is preferred since with this stroke you can make an attacking move, like a smash or a drop. Keep in mind that it is always better to hit the shuttle high, and that the main point of good footwork is to get to the shuttle as quickly as possible to do this.

A Badminton Drill is quite simply a practice.

No, not practicing by playing or knocking a few shuttles across the net to your partner. A Badminton Drill is a practice. It’s a practice of a specific skill or element required to play badminton. The Badminton drill can take many forms but will usually focus on taking a small and specific area on which to work.

Let me give an example from my own style of play, I invariably have my racquet ‘down’ either to the side or in front, even when at the front of the court. But a far better position for the racquet and me as I’m well over six foot, is to have my knees slightly bend and the racquet head raised to shoulder or head height. I need to Drill this habit into my head. So my partner and I play the ‘patty cake’ game, both stand just back of the front service line and try hitting the shuttle as horizontal and as close to the net tape as possible.

It becomes a ‘game’ when there are no rules, i.e. freedom to hit shuttle on either forehand or backhand. It becomes a Drill when you continually just do forehand. It can be further broken down into say, near forehand and far forehand.

Badminton drills are better than practice as they are more specific to particular areas and should be done over a considerable amount of time. An hour spent on a particular Badminton drill is nothing, and what’s more it should be regularly repeated throughout the training regime.

Another Badminton drill might be ‘mid court backhand cross net return’, bit of a mouthful that, but if your partner can deliver the shuttle to the right area this is easily practicable, but the main purpose of the drill could be to get you to change from a forehand grip to a backhand grip!!..

A Badminton drill is a very useful training technique and is simply a repetition of a small but necessary skill.