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In some extremely encouraging news for the sport in the country, the Badminton Association of India(BAI) have taken the decision of staging the second edition of the Indian Badminton League(IBL) in January 2016, the Times of India reports.
The maiden edition of the tournament was held in 2013, with 6 teams in the fray and the Hyderabad Hotshots, led by World Championships runners-up Saina Nehwal had emerged victorious in the competition.
However, during the opening edition, the federation had tied up with sports marketing firm Sporty Solutionz, who had a deal with them for a period of 10 years. but the current tournament would be organised by the BAI.
Confirming the news about the split with the company, Akhilesh Dasgupta, the President of the federation said that the issue had been settled in court and reiterated that it was the apex body for badminton in India which held all rights to stage tournaments in the country.
“The matter with Sporty has already been settled in court. We had given them sufficient time to furnish the bank guarantee of Rs 50 crore which they failed. I am sure that court will understand that BAI holds all rights regarding the sport of badminton in this country. Anyone can go to court in this country , we'll deal with the situation if it crops up," Das Gupta said here on Thursday.
Providing light over why it took the association over two years to bring back the tournament, Dasgupta said that the cramped badminton calendar didn't provide any other slots barring January and August and due to the Commonwealth Games last year, the competition couldnt be staged.
"The BWF calendar only has two windows in January and August. After hosting the first tournament in August in 2013, we didn't want to organise one in January next year and then August of 2014 wasn't available because we already had the Commonwealth Games scheduled then. Now for the purpose of having continuity with the league, we have decided to organise it in the January window." he said.
He further confirmed that the Pune Pistons, which had the likes of Ashwini Ponnappa, Juliane Schenk in their ranks will be replaced by a Chennai-based franchise since they didn't want matches to be held in two separate cities, despite being in the same state.
"We are only replacing Pune with Chennai this time because we don't want the league to be held in two cities in the same state. The players will be getting more money this year because we are planning to increase the salary pool from the existing Rs 1.5 crore cap. The franchise owners are already in talks with some Bollywood celebrities, offering them sweat equity in the teams. These celebrities will increase the glamour quotient of the league," he said.
Dasgupta also said that they were looking to bring in more Asians to the tournament this time. The likes of Lee Chong Wei, Taufik Hidayat etc were the big draws in the last edition.
"We have spoken to the Chinese federation as well as some of the players directly. The players are keen on participating and we should see some of them in IBL-2,"
Here’s hoping that the tournament helps in attracting crowds and more crucially, provides fans with some excellent play on the court.
