Benefits of Playing Badminton

Much like tennis, badminton is a great racquet sport that offers a tremendous amount of benefits for
participants.

Whether it’s in singles or doubles, badminton is a fun and exciting sport to pick up if you’re looking for
an activity

that boosts your physical, mental and social aspects of health.

Some of the many health benefits of Badminton include:

1.1 History and Origin of Badminton

Badminton is one of the racquet sports requiring players to hit a shuttlecock across a net with a racket
inside a badminton court. Generally, it comes in 2 forms:
“Singles”, a 1 vs 1 game and

“Doubles”, a 2 vs 2 games.

You can play badminton in both indoor or outdoor environments, however, most of the world-class
competitions are held in an indoor area because they want to reduce the influence caused by external

factors such as wind and lights to the minimum level.

History of Badminton

Origin of Badminton

Badminton could be traced back to more than 2000 years ago to the ancient game called battledore
(bat or paddle) and shuttlecock (also called “bird” or “birdie”), similar games were played for centuries
across Eurasia countries such as Greece, Egypt, China, India, and Japan.

Nowadays, You can still find a similar game in Japan which is called Hanetsuki, it’s a very popular new
year’s game involving a wooden paddle called hagoita and a shuttle called hane.

Development of Badminton

According to “A Brief History of Badminton from 1870 to 1949 (Links to an external site.)” written by
Betty Uber, modern badminton was created by British military officers by around 1850s in British India,
at that time, a net (Links to an external site.) was added to the game and because it was very popular in
the garrison town of Poona, the game was known as Poona.

During that period, when the weather is windy and wet, instead of a shuttlecock, a woolen ball was
preferred by the upper class and hence invented “Ball badminton (Links to an external site.)”.

By around 1870s, Retired British army officers brought the game back to England from India and it
became a very popular sport. In 1873 the Duke of Beaufort introduced the sport at his country estate,
“Badminton House” in Gloucestershire, since then this sport was called Badminton.

In 1875, a badminton club in Folkestone, England was started by retired officers from British India.

In 1887, J. H. E. Hart of the Bath Badminton Club standardized the rules.

On 13 September 1893, the Badminton Association of England published the first set of rules similar to
the modern rules that were published in a house called “Dunbar” at Six Waverley Grove, Portsmouth,
England. By 1899, they started the first badminton competition in the world, “All England Open
Badminton Championships”.

By 1934, the International Badminton Federation (IBF, now known as the Badminton World Federation)
was formed with England, Scotland, Wales, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, New Zealand, and the
Netherlands as the founding members.

By 1948, the International Badminton Federation launched the first tournament: Thomas Cup (World
Men’s Team Championships). Since then, more world-class events have been launched such as:

Uber Club (World Team Championships for Women)

World Championships (BWF World Championships)

Sudirman Cup (Mixed Team Badminton Championship takes place every 2 years)

World Junior Championships (BWF World Junior Championships)

World Grand Prix Finals (BWF World Badminton Grand Prix Finals, only the top 8 players in the year-end
world rankings were invited)

By 1972, Badminton became a demo sport at the Munich Olympics and became an official Olympic Sport
at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. At that time, only singles and doubles were listed.

By 1996, Mixed Doubles was included in the Atlanta Olympic Games, til now, Badminton is still the only
sport with mixed doubles events in the Olympics.