'BWF playing with our career': Sikki Reddy slams world body over new service rule

What's the story?

Indian doubles specialist N. Sikki Reddy, on Saturday, hit out at the Badminton World Federation (BWF) over the newly implemented service rules. Taking to Twitter, the 24-year-old shuttler revealed slammed the federation and the 'service umpires' for 'playing' with the careers of the badminton stars.

This is how BWF and service judges have been playing with our career Looks like they don't really care about our years of struggle and hard work to achieve our goals.( Not even 1 out of 100 will agree that these are fault serves ) pic.twitter.com/kN8dwIpKDX

— sikkireddy (@sikkireddy) March 10, 2018

She further provided an image which clearly shows that the service was in no way a fault as deemed by the umpire.

Clear picture of my service with shuttle contact which is not a fault and this has been called fault during crucial times. This is not the first time happening😓😓😓 @bwfmedia do something please 🙏 pic.twitter.com/3Kn6lIACki

— sikkireddy (@sikkireddy) March 10, 2018

In case you didn't know...

The ongoing Yonex German Open 2018 is the first tournament where the BWF is testing it's newly implemented service rule. The rule, which has met with criticism right from the outset, states that the whole of the shuttle cannot exceed a height of 1.15m from the surface of the court at the point of hitting. The previous rule only required the shuttle to be below the last rib of the server.

The heart of the matter

Sikki Reddy, partnering Pranaav Jerry Chopra, along with Subhankar Dey, M.R. Arjun and Shlok Ramachandran and Manu Attri and B. Sumeeth Reddy were the only Indians participating in the German Open. Sikki and Jerry crashed out in the second round of the tournament and she had made it clear that the new rule was a cause for concern for players and umpires alike.

“Many players are struggling with the new rule of service,” said Reddy. “I was watching a couple of matches and so many players changed their service style and still getting faults and getting irritated. They literally hit some services so badly that even the opponents couldn’t expect,” she had told Sportskeeda a day back. “Even umpires are struggling as it is very new to them. They are also working on it,” she had added.

What's next?

Next week's All England Open will be the first big test for the new service rule. We will have to wait and see how the rest of the badminton fraternity react to it.

Author's take

It is true that the new rules have been widely criticised already. However, it was unfair to pass a judgement before it was actually implemented. Now that the shuttlers are playing under the new rule, a clearer picture is coming to the fore.