Cork and Feathers

Cork and Feathers

When Gail Emms and Nathan Robertson claimed the silver medal in the Badminton mixed doubles at the Athens Olympics the nation suddenly paid a little bit more attention to one of its oldest sports. Such was the dearth of medals at the Athens Olympics that the achievements of Emms and Robertson were noted in the nations media.

Badminton is a game that has experienced several massive changes in recent years as the world’s governing body has tried to make it more of a spectator sport to rival with the big brother of racket sports, tennis. The scoring system has gone from the traditional system of scoring only on your own serve, to scoring off any point. The result is that the game is much quicker, and the results come much quicker.

If you ask any badminton player at any level what they think of the changing of the scoring system they will tell you that they don’t like it. There’s more pressure on every point now, and less scope to hold on against players who are better than you, though this concern is felt more in the lower levels of the sport.

The changes have brought some success, though it’s hard to say whether the appearance of Badminton tournaments on television are due to the BBC’s decreasing sport portfolio, the changes in the game making the sport more spectator friendly, or increased interest due to the success of our badminton players in recent years. At any rate, Badminton is slightly more in the national eye that it was before, and the British team is experiencing the sort of success that, whilst it may not catapult Badminton to the top of the charts, will at least keep public interest moving along.

Part of the problem with badminton is that it has always been a better sport to play than to watch. There is simply no television angle that can accurately convey the incredible skill of the best badminton players, and as such it doesn’t really work on tv. In addition it is one of those sports that people feel that they can play when they can keep the shuttle going back and forth over the net, anyone can hit a shuttle up, but it takes a bit more skill to hit it downwards.

Anyway, Emms and Robertson will probably get the most attention when the Olympics come around, they are, after all, recent World Champions and the prospect of a medal is always enough to get broadcasters interested. Badminton is still, however, very much a minority sport. When the Olympics finally arrive bookies might offer odds on who’s going to win, but at the moment even the big online betting companies like Blue Square haven’t got the slightest mention of one of the world’s biggest racket sports. If you’re into sports betting, though, when the odds do finally appear it might just be worth putting a bit of money on Britain’s number one mixed doubles pairing.