International badminton player who has represented Pune, Maharashtra & India at multiple international tournaments across the globe.
Highest world tour ranking: 16 ( January 2022 )
Highest World Ranking: 255 ( March 2019 )
Youngest Indian to Play In German League 2019
Part of the winning Contingent In Verbandsliga Germany 2021-2022
This article is solely stating the opinions and experiences of Mr. Hruitvik Ambekar and not intended as facts.
This is a badminton court, you cannot share your knowledge on our courts.
This might hurt the sentiments of many people reading this article. However I have chosen to be brave enough to write this :
Years back I was at badminton training with my own sister at a very renowned facility in Pune. I was helping her with some corrections in her strokes. It is but obvious for a professional athlete to correct his/her own family member if they are doing something wrong. I was correcting her strokes and moments later we were asked to stop as me helping my younger sister was “Illegal” and “coaching was not permitted”. Now tell me, a brother teaching his younger sister, can this be called coaching? Does my father pay me to teach my sister?
The kind of narrow mindset that we find here in Pune in terms of Badminton needs to change. This morning I went out to play with my building friends at a nearby court who are not professionals and above 30 years old. I casually showed them how a particular stroke was to be played. Immediately a man came to me and said, “Coaching is not permitted here”. I laughed and simply walked away. We were not playing on the courts for free, we had paid the full amount required to play.
The weird mindset of people who own these courts or manage these courts upsets me. Badminton here is not being looked up to as a sport where people can succeed but as a sport for revenue generation. I want to sound very practical here, we do need money of course. But at what cost? What kind of leverage is being earned or satisfaction is being gained by restricting a person's growth? We call this city the “Birthplace of badminton”. Do you think we are doing any justice to the professional athletes here? Looking at the facts, how many national champions did we(Pune) produce? How many International Players did the city produce?
Having travelled across the globe and having experienced the badminton culture, I feel very sad about how backward our mindset is when it comes to sports.
Imagine a potential athlete like Sindhu entering the court in Pune and being told that, “coaching is not allowed and if you have to train you have to use our coach who actually knows nothing and has nothing to do with badminton. But for us he is cost effective and our intention is just to earn money and we don't really care about your badminton career or your badminton accomplishments”.
Now I will tell you the reason why coaching is not permitted or sharing of knowledge is not allowed in public facilities like Badminton courts here in Pune.
1. Insecurity - When does one become insecure ? When he/she isn't good enough. That is why they don’t want a better coach to come to their venue.
2. Money - The whole intention here is to earn money at the cost of parents who actually want their children to succeed.
3. Coaches- Here in Pune, you can become a better coach than you can actually become a player. There are very few genuine coaches that exist here. All the genuine coaches are already tired of fighting the wrong doings. Maximum number of coaches in this city are vague with their instructions and have no training, playing or teaching experience. Imagine a person who has never fired a gun - training men for armed war. Parents are easily influenced. A lot of young talent goes into the wrong hands and their desire to play is depleted. Coaches are Insecure because they know they are not true to themselves or the sport.
4. No Vision amongst Coaches - Maximum places aim at revenue building and there is no vision and goal set for athletes. They have no vision for themselves as a coach or a player. You will find very few coaches who have the grit and vision to develop players in the long run.
5. Performance - They realise that if someone better than them comes to the venue and teaches the athletes in a more efficient manner, teaches the athletes the right techniques, they would lose their potential revenue. But what they are losing out on is that everytime you stop an able bodied potential athlete from playing, you are actually hampering the progress of a player who might just become a professional later.
I know this post is going to hurt the sentiments of a lot of people, but it needs to be said. We all know what is being done here is wrong. We all know the approach towards the sport is incorrect. Had the system and coaches been correct, results would be different.
I understand my article might not change the system overnight, but it is an attempt to make others who feel the same, brave enough to speak out if they have similar experiences. I am a self made athlete like many others and have the courage to talk about this endemic.
I write this in hope that the next generation doesn’t have to suffer from this narrow minded thought process and we are really able to produce some elite athletes in the near future.
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