Ashwini Ponnappa pleads for equal support to doubles stars

Ashwini Ponnappa with Viren Rasquinha at SCRECARD 2015

Badminton like most other racquet sports provides us with a tantalising example where in the tension between the necessarily selfish individualism required to succeed and adhering to the team dynamic that applies when it comes to excelling at multi-sporting championships are at crossroads.

Former medalist from the World Championships and one of the biggest names in the sport in India, Ashwini Ponnappa emphasized on the disparity which exists, in a recent interaction with Sportskeeda at SCORECARD 2015, “It’s unbelievable you know, the treatment meted out to doubles players when compared to our singles counterparts. Especially since all top tournaments like the Uber Cup or the Commonwealth Games, there are 5 matches which make a tie- and 3 of them are doubles fixtures. Clearly we are equally important, if not more, why the bias then?”

What she mentions seems to be a part of a bigger problem, which involves the status of the sport and how its run in our country. Beyond Saina Nehwal, there hardly seems to be a constant influx of corporate funding and people still rely on recommendations from coaches and managers alike to receive support for participation in tournaments all year long.

Those recommendations, it seems, are not always based on merit, as Ponnappa pointed out, “Singles players are always favoured; also if there is someone who trains at the national coach’s academy, they are preferred.

People often compare us with Tennis players and that’s extremely unfair, the set up there is extremely professional- people like Sania, Leander and Rohan look after their own finances and are not reliant on the government or the federation for that matter. We do not have such leeway though.”

The outburst, from what I could sense was just a prologue of how deep the mess really is, “It’s sad that after years of winning accolades we have to resort to this,” she added.

Needless to say, the situation doesn’t augur well with the growth of the game in our country. Hopefully though, with the Olympics approaching next year, there will come up things which would ensure that all concerned entities in an individual sport like Badminton do indeed become cohesive and the athletes are given a fair run, irrespective of their preference of event.