GMBA district meet needs to be better organised

If you thought that playing matches well past midnight was a problem only on the international circuit or junior ranking tournaments in India, then you haven’t visited the Greater Mumbai Inter District tournament this week.

For the first two days the matches went well beyond midnight. Unlike the other two categories of tournaments listed above where the duration of individual matches or extremely high number of entries has been the reason for the long schedule, the story of GMBA inter-district tournament was about mismanagement and callous approach by the officials.

For the start, chief referee TRN Swami was not available at the venue (Swami insists that he had informed the organisers that he wasn’t available and hence should not be nominated as Chief Referee) and hence the players and non-qualified people ended handling the responsibility of preparing the schedule and conducting the tournament.

While Swami was unavailable due to personal reasons, the district body did not appoint any other qualified officials to oversee the proceedings, which created further issues during the matches as the players and even the spectators were seen protesting some of the decisions taken by the on-court officials.

The district championship is conducted in six age categories and had about 330 entries, which meant that there were about 75-80 matches to be played per day during the first round. This meant that the officials had to be strict about maintaining the schedule.

However, what was surprising was that some players were allowed to come at their own convenience and many a times the other team had to wait for an hour or two beyond the scheduled time just because their opponents came late.

Instead of giving walkovers, the organisers preferred delaying the schedule and penalising those who came on time.

The bigger problem is about the officiating. Greater Mumbai Badminton Association, headed by Kulin Manek, has a dearth of qualified officials and those in the Mumbai Suburban prefer to stay away from the district meet over payment issues.

With Swami also missing in action, there was no qualified official to take a decision about walkovers during the tournament and created a bigger havoc.

It’s time the GMBA gets its house in order.