Men’s Badminton-A disgraced passion

Which sport requires strength, endurance, wit as well as mental capabilities? None
other than the sport of badminton. Badminton is like ballet dancing. It requires a lot of
control, strength, mind play and measured movement. I’m sure that you’ve all heard
of this great sport and perhaps you’ve even enjoyed it at one point in your lifetime.
Most of us, as children, have probably experienced playing badminton, or some
version of it – remember the bon-bon racket? As kids, we probably managed a
couple of rallies and declared ourselves badminton experts. Consequently, it all
seemed too easy, especially compared to basketball, volleyball, or tennis. Badminton
was often put in the same level as Seven stones, Hide and Seek, Hopscotch, and
other games that children played on the streets. It was exactly that – a game, not a
sport. Most people don’t consider badminton a sport and the few who do, see it as a
“sissy sport”. There are people who also think that badminton is a girly sport because
they think that most people who are playing in the game tend to be soft and relax.
The shuttlecocks that used to play badminton is also full of feathers that is light and
soft.
I am here to shatter this view and to prove that badminton is as challenging as your
North American Macho sports like football, soccer and tennis.
Badminton is hailed as the second most popular sport in the world. Let’s take a
country where badminton is least popular – America. A 1993 study revealed that
more than 1.2 million Americans play badminton at least 25 times a year, 760,000
Americans call badminton their favourite sport, and more than 11.2 million
Americans played the sport at least once during the year. Internationally, more than
1.1 billion people watched the 1992 Olympic badminton competition on television.
Despite its popularity, badminton is also one of the most underrated sports in history.
I’ve had a shameful experience when someone laughed at me for saying “I play
badminton as a major sport”. I will dispel this belief momentarily. Badminton is the
world’s fastest racket sport. Yes, it is nearly twice as fast as tennis and almost 1.5
times faster than squash. The fastest recorded speed of a shuttlecock is 332 km/h or
206 miles/h compared to the fastest tennis serve 113 miles/hour. Let’s just ask
ourselves this question: How many football players, rugby players, tennis players or
even soccer players can even react to a shuttlecock coming toward you at a speed
of 332 km/h?
As it has been rightly said by famous badminton player Lee Chong Wei “If you think
badminton is easy then you have never played badminton.”
A 45 minutes badminton match includes 6000 meter running, arm swing of more
than 100 times, 300+ body movements, stride for 210+ times, jumping 160+ times
and hitting shuttles 1000 times whose average speed is 289 km/h.
A similar kind of belief system was there in the people of 19 century, they thought
that women cannot earn a physics degree and contribute in the field of chemistry.
But could they stop Marie Curie to become the only person to win a Nobel prize for
two science contributions. She was rejected in the university of Krakow just because
she was a woman. But she followed her passion and was able to convert her dream
into reality.
During my collage times, I loved playing badminton and also not the best but I played
quite well. Every year different sport tournaments were held in my collage and each
year I had to inquire that is badminton tournament for men also. But every time I
received a no in return. In the last year of my collage, finally there was a badminton
tournament for men as well. I was very happy after listening to this news. But that
happiness was for a short period of time only, before few days of the event, I
received a call from the tournament organisers to inform me that men’s badminton is
no longer a part of their event due to a less number of male participation.
Ratio of male and female players in various sports:
Badminton – 47% male and 53% women
Basketball – 76% male and 24% women
Soccer – 86% male and 14% women
Tennis – 59% male and 41% women
Many men had quit playing badminton despite of being passionate because they
faced criticism. I also had a shameful experience when someone laughed at me for
saying “I play badminton as a major sport”.
In our childhood when we like something and decided to pursue it, we either get
mocked by our friends or get demotivated by our family. Parents tell us that they
don’t have enough money or resources to help us with this. That’s it, we get
demotivated and start feeling embarrassed about our interest. We get intimidated by
their response and change our mind.
Here lies the real challenge – not to get intimidated by what people say about our
passion. But if we fail to do so, we tend to lose ourselves. Those who are brave
enough to follow their passion no matter what people say are the real winners. But
those people who got intimidated, life becomes tough for them after they are done
with their studies and go out for a job. We work for money but most of us don’t love
what we do. We do it anyway because we forget our passion before even engrossing
ourselves into it.
So, the idea is not to punish ourselves by what people think or say about us or our
interests and love ourselves. It’s better to ignore what people think or say rather than
ignoring ourselves the whole life. That is how we can fulfil our dreams, that’s the only
way we can achieve satisfaction in life.