IPL-inspired badminton league set to begin May 26

Uday Sane, Secretary of the organising committee of the Maharashtra Badminton League

The second edition of the Maharashtra Badminton League, Indian badminton’s first experience of an IPL-style event, will return to Pune on May 26^th. The MBL will see seven teams – one up from last year – and promises to be better than its inaugural season.

The MBL’s successful conduct last year raised hopes of India eventually conducting a badminton extravaganza – an Indian badminton league with international players. While the idea has been okayed by the Badminton Association of India but has yet to take shape, fans can content themselves with watching a smaller experiment in action.

By all accounts, the inaugural season of the MBL left players, spectators and team owners happy. The second edition thus has seven teams compared to last year’s six. While Mumbai, Nagpur, Sangli, Jalgaon and Ahmednagar will have one team each, Pune will field two teams. The event will be round-robin format with each tie consisting of two men’s singles and one mixed doubles, women’s singles and men’s doubles each. There will be no women’s doubles. The top four teams in the round robin will qualify for the semifinals. The event is open only to Maharashtra-domiciled players; last year saw players of the caliber of Sayali Gokhale, Aditi Mutatkar, Trupti Murgunde and other top players take part.

Uday Sane, organizing secretary of the league and the visionary behind this event, told Sportskeeda that people were looking forward to the MBL, and the first year’s experience had been ‘rewarding’. “This event is popular in Maharashtra,” he said. “People are contacting us every day asking about the league.” The MBL is organized by the Haveli Taluka Badminton Association, backed by the district and state bodies. All matches will be held in Pune due to logistical reasons.

Sane said they’d learnt a few lessons from last year. While the first edition was held on Saturdays and Sundays over three weeks, this year will see it being held through one week to ensure players’ schedules aren’t disrupted. “We want to make it more exciting this year, so we have prize money for winners of every match in every tie,” Sane said. “Singles players will make Rs1000 for every mat h one, while doubles teams will make Rs 1500. Overall, Rs 1.44 lakh will be distributed among players. The team that wins the league will get Rs 5 lakh.”

Teams line up before the start of the first edition of the MBL

To help make the event glamorous last year, Marathi actresses were roped in as brand ambassadors. This year, however, that plan has been junked because Sane says the actresses were keen on their own publicity and not on the event. Still, he concedes that that audience will expect some kind of entertainment. “I don’t think we’ll have song and dance, but we need some sort of entertainment,” Sane says. “The older generation will not like it if we have (Bollywood) song-and-dance. We might go in for some Marathi folk or cultural performances.”

The first edition of the MBL had ridden upon some astute thinking by the organizers. As some of the team owners were property developers, organizers had prevailed upon them to use their hoardings to advertise the league. This year, teams are being encouraged to have practice ties against each other which will help bring in greater spectator involvement and publicity.

Apart from the MBL, the Pune District Badminton Association — of which Sane is the Secretary – has other plans to spread the game. One of these is to approach 10 schools and offer coaches and playing material during PT classes. “At least 4000 students will get involved in the game,” says Sane. “In our society, kids take up cricket because their parents give them a plastic bat and ball. We need to attract them towards badminton as well.”