EXCLUSIVE: PDMBA to organize Senior Nationals Badminton Championships 2022 in Pune

Pune, May 18: In a major development, the Badminton Association of India (BAI) has decided to organize the Senior Nationals Badminton Championships in Pune, Maharashtra. This came after the Poona District and Metropolitan Badminton Association, which was celebrating 75 years of its association on Tuesday, made an announcement about the tournament.

 

 

 

Pradeep Gandhe, former international badminton player and Executive Committee Member of BAI as well as Deputy President of Maharashtra Badminton Association, made the announcement. Notably, PDMBA organized this tournament in Pune in 1997. Though Nagpur had hosted the event in 2018, no such tournament was held in Pune after 1997.

 

Ranjeet Natu, Secretary of PDMBA, has expressed gratitude towards the BAI for alloting the nationals to PDMBA as it is celebrating the 75th year of PDMBA. Giving the details about it, he said, "The decision to hold the nationals in Pune was made in BAI Executive Committee meeting happened on Sunday."

 

 

Speaking about the dates of the events, he informed the event will likely take place in December-January. "The dates are not known because the international calendar is still a bit going haywire because of COVID at various places. But of course, we are sure around December or January the nationals will be held in Pune. We, in fact, had asked for these nationals last year but because of the pandemic the nationals were not held at all last year."

 

 

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It is pertinent to mention that this event taking place in Pune holds significance as it was last conducted in 2019. "So this is after a gap of one year, two years rather because last it was held in 2019. So there were no nationals in 2020 as well as in 2021. So in 2022, we get this chance to organize this international," Mr. Ranjeet said. The event consists of players coming from every state including Railways, Air India and etc.

 

 

 

Further, he added, "Zonals will happen in September and then the zonal winners go to nationals that consists of one men's singles, one women's singles, one women's doubles, one men's doubles, and a mixed doubles. So that's what the format is for the interzonal and later for five days they will open the Championship and the winner of this tournament is the national champion for India. So we expect that all the good players who we saw playing for India in the Thomas Cup as well as the Uber Cup would be participating in these nationals."

 

 

There will be another significant development that will happen during this event. The senior nationals will be conducted with the use of a unique app. "The complete nationals would be held or rather conducted with the use of a unique app which is under development and we are developing that up ourselves taking help from a few of the software developers here in Pune, and the complete tournament would be app-driven. So it would be very smooth and easy to conduct as well as keeping up the tradition of Pune of excellent organization, we expect that these nationals also rather we are confident that these nationals also will be epoch-making nationals and they will set a new trend for organizing large events in India," Mr. Ranjeet said.

 

 

On Tuesday, PDMBA, while celebrating the 75th year of its association, also launched the "The Poona Game". It is a Coffee Table Book about badminton and PDMBA's tremendous journey that began in 1946. It is been named as "Poona Game" as badminton originated in Pune. The program also witness the Felicitation of distinguished personalities as representatives of all those who served PDMBA in its journey till now. Pullela Gopichand, Vice-President of BAI, and Sanjay Mishra, General Secretary of BAI. who were the chief guests, had joined the event virtually. Gajanan Ekbote, Chairman & Managing Council of Progressive Education Society felicitated the personalities.

 

Gopichand made a special request at the event. He said, "India has won the Thomas Cup title for the first time ever. So, I am making a special request to PDMBA to add a few pages about the milestone achieved on Sunday in "The Poona Game" book in your next edition."