Have more tournaments at one venue, do something radical to restart game: Gopichand to BWF

India's national bminton coach Pullela Gopichand wants BWF to come up with "rical" solutions to restart sport smoothly in a post-COVID-19 world, suggesting that conducting more tournaments at a single venue could be way forward. coronavirus outbreak, which has so far infected over 41 lakh people and caused close to 3 lakh deaths worldwide, forced Bminton World Federation (BWF) to suspend all events, including Olympic qualifiers, till end of July. "BWF should talk to health people and revise format itself, tournament structure itself and do whatever is required," Gopichand told PTI. "My view is if something rical needs to be done, n let's do it and let's go ahe with sport," he said.

'Have more tournaments at one venue...'

In a bid to salv international circuit, governing body h postponed important events such as Thomas and Uber Cup Final (October 3-11), besides asking for fresh slots from respective countries, including India, to conduct suspended Olympic qualifiers.

"My concern is that, you are trying to shift dates, probably re needs to be a change in thinking. If same thing continues, and whole entour is travelling again to different countries n it is again risking players," Gopichand said.

Shuttlers travel almost every week to a new tournament during bminton season. Gopichand said this should change.

"I would say, planning of tournaments has to be such that players can actually stay at one place and play more number of tournaments. It could be next rmal," he said. 

re is speculation that sport might initially return without fans in wake of global health crisis. Gopichand believes one way of going about things is to segregate players on basis of ir respective formats -- men's singles, women's singles and doubles -- and n conducting tournaments in three different countries simultaneously. "If re are spectators, and it is a TV and internet sport n how does it matter wher you are conducting it in three different places, just lock players in one place for three weeks. "Inste of doing tournaments say Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in three different places, do it in one place," he said.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore were scheduled to host three crucial Olympic qualifiers along with India before all events h to be suspended. "You give men's singles to one country, give women's singles to one country and doubles to one country. So parallelly three tournament can happen. In this way, players will t have to travel so much, y can be quarantined," he said. "If it is a draw of 32, it is only 16 matches per day. We can operate just two courts maximum, so that you don't have to mix with many players. "So basically, if you really have to move, you probably have to look at a rical change in format," he explained.

While country is under lockdown till May 17 to contain contagious disease, Sport Ministry is devising a plan for phase-wise resumption of national camps for Olympic-bound athletes by end of this month. Asked how he plans to go about it as he, besides being national coach, also runs an Acemy, Gopichand said: "I think luckily we are t an out and out contact sport, so it is better. "So isolating smaller groups, and ensuring that people don't interact too much is one way of at least starting things."

Im credits: PTI