Jack Koh (left) and Tan Bin Shen (right) showing off their medals..the duo defeated top ranked pairs from Thailand, Indonesia and China to win a silver medal at the World Junior Badminton Championships at Pretoria on Sunday.
PETALING JAYA: Former international Datuk Jack Koh believes that a revamp in the format of the Malaysian Purple League is necessary in order to provide a clearer path for grooming young badminton talents.
The premier professional badminton league was founded in 2014 and had previously featured a lot of star players like Datuk Lee Chong Wei, Japan’s Kento Momota and Lee Yong-dae of South Korea.
However, in the future editions, instead of focusing so much on the world-class players, more emphasis will be on the grassroots level where players from the age of eight to 15 compete.
The last edition of the Malaysian Purple League was held in Genting Highlands in October 2022.
“For sports development, I think we all need to understand that it takes more than one or two years for players to become a world champion,” said Jack, who is the co-founder and chief executive officer of the Malaysian Purple League.
“The Australian Institute of Sport came out with a research paper stating that it takes eight to 12 years to nurture a world champion from ground zero.
“We take an average timeline of 15 years, about three to four Olympic cycles so we are looking into kids as young as eight years old to be groomed.
“That’s why we have this Road to Nurturing Champions of Tomorrow (NCT) junior competition followed by the university league before entering professional competition.
“This is the progression ... so, instead of starting from the top which we had done before this, the approach this time is we are going to start from ground zero, the very grassroots and from there, we grow with them.
“We have seen the development of players from Petaling BC – Aaron Chia, Soh Wooi Yik, Chen Tang Jie and Man Wei Chong – whom we have groomed in the system and what we are doing now is we go back to the grassroots and continue doing the same thing.”
The NCT Junior Championships will be held from January to May with five legs, where the semi-finalists and finalists will get to compete in the Grand Prix Finals in June at the Sports Arena Sentosa in Kuala Lumpur.
The circuit will be held in Melaka, Pahang, Penang, Selangor and Sabah. 505 participants have registered to compete in the first leg.
Selected winners from the boys’ and girls’ Under-9, Under-11, Under-13 and Under-15 categories will get a chance to travel to Paris for the Olympic Games.
