Flawed seeding has hurt Indian shuttlers, says Vimal

Bengaluru: Three Indians in the top 16 of the men’s world rankings in badminton are not an unmixed blessing. On the one hand, their presence signifies the impact the country has made in the sport; on the other, it means an unequal distribution of top players in a Super Series event. The Super 1000 Malaysia Open in Kuala Lumpur next week and the Super 750 India Open in New Delhi have a similar draw pattern with a maximum of two players among HS Prannoy (world No.8), Lakshya Sen (No.10) and K Srikanth (No.13) advancing to the second round — the pre-quarterfinals. That too with a generous amount of luck.
The Badminton World Federation (BWF) knows that this is an outcome of a lopsided draw where the seedings are restricted to eight. However, it hasn’t addressed the issue to ensure equitable distribution of seeds and a fair chance for each one of them to enter the pre-quarterfinals.
“The only way to do it is by increasing the number of seeds to 16. With the Super 1000 and 750 events being open to the top 32 players in the world and without a qualifying tournament, the draw is bound to look similar if BWF persists with eight seeds. It was the same years back when we had 64-player draws,” former India coach U Vimal Kumar told TOI.
“The Chinese, Danes, Indonesians and Japanese were affected before. Now, we are badly hit by this draw because there are more of our players in the top 16. The Malaysia Open next week has Lakshya and Prannoy facing off in the first round while Srikanth is up against Japan’s Kenta Nishimoto. The logic may be to seed 25 percent of the field. But this works when the draw is big, say 128. A lot of talent is bunched together in a 32-member draw.”
Vimal felt that the top 16 players in the world ranking list are the worst affected as some of them end up facing each other in the opening rounds itself. “The top 16 in the world are equally good and capable enough of beating each other. Once the seeding is restricted to eight, a few good players bow out even before the competition reaches the last-16 stage while unseeded players get the opportunity to sneak through. This leads to some one-sided matches in the subsequent rounds. I think the top 16 ranked players should be seeded and a lot more weightage needs to be given to them,” he said.
At the India Open, which begins on January 17, Srikanth takes on top seed and world No. 1 Viktor Axelsen while Lakshya and Prannoy cross swords yet again in the first round. “This again grossly limits the number of Indians in the second round and will come as a big blow to the presence of local players, thereby harming the local interest and viewership. Had the seedings been 16, the game could get to see far better matches towards the later stages of the tournament. This concept could be followed the world over to popularise the sport.”