New Delhi:The 11th edition of Yonex-Sunrise India Open part of HSBC BWF World Tour would be played in New Delhi from January 17-22. The premier Indian Badminton tournament has been upgraded to the BWF World Tour Super 750 status from this year.
General Secratary of Badminton Association of India(BAI), Sanjay Mishra expressed pride at the popular tournament reaching the significant milestone “this tournament has been the flag bearer for Indian badminton since long, this is an extremely proud moment for us at BAI to see the first HSBC BWF World Tour Super 750 tournament officially starting from tomorrow. Here we are taking the journey to the next level, creating another milestone in the 11th edition of this prestigious championship.”
He expressed immense optimism regarding the growth of Badminton in India “Badminton has seen tremendous growth in recent times, especially the last one year has been very fruitful, in the month of January last year despite peak Covid challenges we successfully organised three back to back international tournaments in India. Our hosting abilities were applauded by BWF and the entire global badminton community and I am very thankful my to my collegues in BWF for allotting a Super 100 tournament in Guwahati starting this year from December 5 onwards.”
He underscored the point that in order to ensure that India develops a large pool of talent it needs to host a lot of highly competitive tournaments “Apart from the already allotted Super 73 Syed Modi international, Odisha International challenge, Bengaluru and Raipur International challenge along with two junior internationals at Pune and Hyderabad, we have also a proposal for one more junior international from BWF, we are planning to host this in Kereala. Our objective is to ensure that India gets to host maximum number of tournaments so that our fringe players can take maximum benefit out of it”
He noted how India has been emerging as a powerful Badminton playing nation “We currently have 21 men and women singles players in the top 100, we have 4-6 doubles pairs in the top 50 including mixed doubles. Highlight of lasts years men’s team was giving us the biggest victory of the decade-Thomas Cup gold medal.”
