How Badminton has been a leader in on-court coaching and why it’s exciting for watching experience | Badminton News

After plenty of drama in which Serena Williams was even docked a point for what was dubbed as receiving on–court instructions, tennis effected a remarkable volte face on players getting coached on the court. But the always-enterprising Australian Open, couldn’t really have let the opportunity to have Andy Murray sit out with his usual poker-face in the box for Novak Djokovic. In what has been a refreshing addition, the year’s first Grand Slam welcomed fragments of on-court coaching, though not quite mic’d up.Badminton, far tinier and literally more scrunched in court space, that’s been playing out in the vicinity in Indonesia, will let out a quiet chuckle.
Though not quite inevitable, reactive coaching, and improvised interventions, can only add to the drama and watching-experience of an individual sport.
The arguments against allowing coaching on court, are pretty straightforward. Players ought to think for themselves and pit their brains in one-on-one battles against each other. Why should they be spoon-fed tactic tweaks? Then there is the perennial time-crunching battle that all sports are forever engaged in, wanting to get a move-on with no pauses.
And finally, there is the draction ploy, where opponents can allege that the chattering messes with their focus – though that is singularly inapplicable in shuttle. Try pleading for shushing quiet, at ora Senayan, the noisiest of cauldrons, where doubles partners struggle to hear each other – such is the din. Tennis pros who are cottonwooled in mandated noise-cancelling arenas, would go fairly insane at the ora with its relentless auditory assault. Badminton pros forget all pretensions to prim, at ora. A coach bellowing away to a rival, might sound positively comforting.
But there’s a reason coaching assance makes sense in badminton. It’s a shorter match duration with no sitting breaks to gather thoughts or catch your breath. Intensity for shuttlers is pretty much concentrated as points are reeled off beyond the mid-set breaks, where coaches actually walk up to their athletes, and the broadcast cameras glean for coaching-directions, and it is widely dissected in commentary.
But the cauldron-like spotlight of badminton, means players crave a reassuring presence, even if it’s someone asking them to calm down, breathe slow. It can get annoying and amateurish if a competitor is constantly looking back, but shuttlers need that support on court because battles get frenzied always, and game tactics and shuttle flights are judged and humanly computed far better a coach, sitting and taking in the whole scene, than a player who’s figuring everything out and executing, responding and improvising in scrunched time. A Live bouncing board, simply, improves the quality and variety of rallies, and reduces monotony.
Of course, nothing can best a reflexive return of a Lakshya Sen or a Tai Tzu-ying deception, and we would be naive to think Akane Yamaguchi puts in all those dives and impossible looking crazy-ball flying retrieves because a coach told her to do so. Those moments purely belong to the player’s talent. But it would be equally silly to think Carolina Marin would’ve turned around the Rio Olympics final, without Fernando Rivas intervening at the precise time, or that Lai Chien-cheng didn’t take Tai’s career to another level, and had pin-point advice when she won her All Englands.
Tai was talented beyond description, but the wins weren’t always lining up. Lai Chien-cheng was on military substitute duty at her school, and was annoyed at her high unforced errors before he decided to become her sparring partner and get her game on track. Along the way he learnt from Tai that women’s singles could be pretty power-packed (he had been maken earlier that it was floaty and moonballing), but he gave her abundant talent direction, and exact cues on crucial points that helped cut down on unforced errors. There was plenty of out-of-the-box thinking in practice, but for all the flair to amount to something – wins – the coach needed to be on court.
Famous Indian wins are replete with strategy-changes employed at the last instance in closing out matches – the two World Championship medals of B Sai Praneeth and HS Prannoy come to mind immediately, as the likes of Anthony Ginting, Jonatan Chrie and even Viktor Axelsen were brought down, on-court, on-the-spot thinking.
Though perhaps, the greatest out-thinking a coach occurred in what is easily the best match PV Sindhu has played: out maneuvering Tai Tzu-ying at the 2019 Basel World Championships. Watch replays of the endgame, and you know exactly how she switched her game, and navigated the many mazes that Tai can weave for opponents.
Saina Nehwal grew up to be a pretty self-motivated player, but there’s a bunch of wins in that career, even title defining points, that needed that pithy coaching tip just before she went in to receive or serve the crucial point. Mathias Boe took it to another level, and though his most audible instructions were for Satwik and Chirag to stay on their toes and not slacken, he could read momentum swings and stem the downslides.
On the flip side, some of India’s most heartbreaking defeats have occurred when its shuttlers have been allowed to dawdle in crunch moments, and fallen short on not just clutch temperament but shot-selection. Sindhu at 17-17 in deciders is a classic inflection point, where the new coach Irwansyah might want to stay alert. It’s not quite pulling of strings like a puppeteer, but there’s a fair few matches when you look back and think, that one pithy tweak hinted the coach, could’ve made all the difference.
Mercifully, badminton wasn’t stuck-up about a player needing help at the crunch. It set up some nice coaching battles, and made the sport richer. Help would always be given to those who asked for it. Even to born-wizards. Tennis is catching up now.