The Origins and History of Badminton As a Sport
Apart from badminton, my other love is history. So why not combine the two? Let’s have a bit of fun now! Being a history nerd, I googled: History of badminton. The results page came up and each listed website that had appeared as an answer that more or less the same answer: India and British India. This was my first thought: The sport I love so much had originated in my own country! I got excited and dug some more. Now, I will share with you what have I learned during this journey!
Ancient Texts
In ancient texts, traces of primitive versions of badminton have been found. For example, Siamese, Chinese, and Egyptian texts talk of a game where people played a game where they had to keep the “ball” up high with clubs and bats.
Even today, the Japanese play a game called Hanetsuki during the New Year. Similar to badminton, in Hanetsuki, two players have to hit a ball or a shuttlecock using bats trying to keep it from touching the ground. Therefore, in my opinion, this is the most modern version of badminton that exists today.
Hanetsuki
When was the game of badminton first played? Nobody knows the answer to this. What I do know is that throughout the history of the world, people have played games similar to badminton.
Battledore and Shuttlecock
As per Betty Uber’s “A Brief History of Badminton from 1870 to 1949”, the earliest plays of modern badminton can be traced back to the 1800s in British India. It was called “Poona” as per the ancient name of the game and was popularised by British military officers in the 1850s in the garrison town of “Poona”, now Pune. The game and the town it supposedly originated from had the same name. The British called it Battledore and Shuttlecock.
Badminton
Around the 1870s, retired British military officers returning to England from India popularised the game of Battledore and Shuttlecock in England. In 1873, the Duke of Beaufort introduced the sport at his country estate, “Badminton House” in Gloucestershire. Thus, the sport came to be called Badminton!
After “Badminton”
A lot of developments in the game’s rules and regulations followed after its modernization. J.H. Hart of the Bath Badminton Club created the first set of written rules and regulations for badminton. They created a system for scoring points, set height and player court restrictions, and standardized court layout.
On September the 13th, 1893, the Badminton Association of England published the first set of standardized rules similar to the ones followed today. In 1899, the first-ever badminton competition was held at Six Waverley Grove, Portsmouth, England. It was called the “All England Open Badminton Championships.”
In 1934, the International Badminton Federation was established with the United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, New Zealand, and the Netherlands as its founding members.
In 1948, the first-ever international badminton tournament was held by the International Badminton Federation. It was called the Thomas Cup. Thomas Cup became the predecessor to other world-class events such as the Uber Club and World Championships (BWF).
In 1972, badminton was incorporated as a demo sport in the Munich Olympics. In 1992, it became an official Olympic sport in the Barcelona Olympics with singles and doubles listed as the official categories. In 1996, mixed doubles were included in the Atlanta Olympic games becoming the only sport with mixed doubles events in the Olympics.
Then and Now
When it started, badminton was played as an outdoor sport. However, today it is played indoors on a rectangular court. The use of the net remains the same. It is astonishing to see how science and technology have changed this sport throughout its history. The first rackets were made out of wood. While modern rackets are manufactured using Japanese Carbon Fibre.
The equipment and clothes we use today for playing badminton are very different from the ones used in the past. The continuously evolving nature of this game is what has remained its hallmark throughout the years.
That is what made me fall in love with the game, and I am sure many of us here have fallen in love with it because of it’s speedy nature. The reason I wrote this blog is not educate people on the history of badminton but as a self-realization about how many turns and turmoils the players of this sport must have faced during all those years which are just numbers in this blog. It’s a tribute to the sport of badminton itself.
