Top shuttlers, including P V Sindhu and Saina Nehwal, will participate at the Senior National Championships slated to be held from November 2 to November 8 in Nagpur, stated the BAI President Himanta Biswa Sarma.
"When we conduct our national tournament, normally our seniors choose not to play. Like Saina has not participated in our nationals since long. I have not seen her playing in our nationals since 2010," Sarma told reporters.
"In Bengaluru, we have taken a decision, all our national players need to play in our senior national badminton championship. So this year, we are going to have a championship from November 2 to November 8 in Nagpur."
Sarma said he had a meeting with the senior players and they have voluntarily given their nod to participate in the National Championship.
"Before coming to Kochi I had a meeting with all the senior players and this time because of our hectic engagement with all the players, all the players have voluntarily decided to participate in the senior nationals," he said.
"It will be after years, where we will see in our senior nationals Saina, Sindhu, everybody will join."
Interestingly, Macau Open Grand Prix Gold will be held from November 7 to 12. Sindhu have won the women's singles title thrice from 2013 to 2015.
Sarma said: "All the players having international engagement normally play in our nationals because of three factors -- 1) they fear injury because our location is such that we may not have a good international standard of sports. 2) their international commitment, 3) national used to be conducted in a very casual manner, sometimes games come up midnight, sometimes it is very early morning.
Sarma said BAI will soon decide the locations where the five national coaching centres will be set up in the country.
"We have decided to set up five national badminton centres, one in north, one in south, one in east, one in west and one in northeast," he said.
"We will be finalising the locations soon. We will go to the state governments requesting for land."
Sarma said the BAI needs eight acres of land in each region to develop the facilities.
"BAI is pursuing a bigger goal. We don't have a national coaching centre, we don't have any regional coaching centre of our own. We are doing it in somebody's infrastructure," he said.
