PETALING JAYA: A day after India's H.S. Prannoy made noise, several other top shuttlers have also expressed their frustration over the hectic badminton schedule at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games after being forced to play matches late into the night and return to court just hours later.
Former world No. 1 P. V. Sindhu was among those affected after playing three matches within 18 hours.
The Indian eventually went down 21-11, 18-21, 10-21 to China’s Chen Yufei in the quarter-finals at the Ichinomiya City Municipal Gymnasium in Aichi.
Sindhu had already endured a difficult schedule before the match, with delays affecting her earlier outings against Taiwan’s Chiu Pin-chian and Japan’s Tomoka Miyazaki.
Her match against Miyazaki only ended at around 1am local time and Sindhu said she did not return to her accommodation until about 3am.
Just a few hours later, she had to head back to the venue for her quarter-final.
"Three matches in 18 hours. Back at 3 a.m., out again at 8:30 a.m. It took a toll," said Sindhu.
"But after a camp that gave me every reason to believe, I wanted so much more. My team and I are already working on closing out those moments. We will fix it.
"I’m hurting, but that’s okay. I’m glad it still means enough to hurt this much. I still want this. I still bring all of myself to that court. That feeling keeps me going.
"There’s room for pride, too. From my first Asian Games in 2014 to my fourth now, twelve years of giving everything for India.
"I want to let myself feel that. One painful result cannot define a journey that means so much,” said Sindhu on social media.
Sindhu was not the only player unhappy with the schedule.
Indonesia’s Jonatan Christie also had to wait until around 1am local time before starting his third-round match against Sri Lanka’s Viren Nettasinghe.
Although Jonatan won, the match only finished close to 2am and he was left wondering why it had not been moved to another court that was already available.
"I’m grateful that I managed to get through something that was not easy. But honestly, my mood was affected because we played so late, to the point where it was already early morning.
"I was quite frustrated as to why the match was not moved to Courts 3 or 4, which had already finished earlier. It affected my focus as well," said Jonatan after the match.
Jonatan then returned to court for his quarter-final against Singapore’s Loh Kean Yew but lost 14-21, 19-21 to miss out on the semi-finals.
The demanding schedule has not only affected Sindhu and Jonatan, with several players having to play twice in the same day during the early rounds of the individual competition.
Malaysia’s mixed doubles pairs Chen Tang Jie-Cheng Su Yin and Goh Soon Huat-Shevon Lai Jemie were among those who also had to deal with the tight turnaround between matches.
