New Scoring System Introduced at Upcoming World Junior BadmintonA new scoring system will be introduced at the World Junior Badminton Championships which opens Friday in Guangzhou, according to the organizers.Yang Shu'an, vice president of the Chinese Badminton Association and the organizing committee, said that the aim is to make the game more efficient and exiciting. "Under the experimental best-of-five game, the points of every set are reduced from 15 to 7," he said in a press release Thursday morning. The new scoring system is devised to raise public interest and sponsorship for badminton competitions. "We're really trying to improve the image of badminton and the games so that we can get more coverage on TV," said Vanessa Freeman, the IBF director of events. "We will analyze the details of the matches under the experimental scoring system to see whether or not we should actually go forward with it." In the current badminton games, players need to take 15 points for the victory of a set in all the men's competitions as well as the women's doubles games, and 11 points were required to claim a win for the women's singles players. A usual badminton game lasts 30-40 minutes, but some could be extended to one and a half hours or even longer, which proved to be too long for both the players and the spectators. The fourth edition of the biennial tournament, which was inaugurated in 1992, will stage the team championships for the first time in addition to the five original individual championships. Team championships will use the Surirman Cup formation, under which a team comprise players for men's and women's singles, men's and women's doubles and mixed doubles. A total of 291 teenager shuttlers from 34 countries and regions, including traditional badminton powerhouses China, Indonesia, South Korea, will take part in the under-19 junior championships, which runs through November 12 with 24 squads starting team events on Friday. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |