Badminton and Table Tennis: Rules, Terms, Trophies

Badminton and table tennis are the two racket games that Indian competitive papers ask about most after cricket and hockey, because Indian players win medals in both. The questions are narrow and repeatable: the governing body and its headquarters, the measurements of the court or the table, how a game is scored, the trophies for team events, and the terms and cards used by umpires.

Badminton: the game and its governing bodies

Badminton is played with a light racket and a shuttlecock over a net, as singles or doubles. Its modern form grew out of a game the British army played in Pune in the nineteenth century, called Poona, and it took its present name from Badminton House, the seat of the Duke of Beaufort in Gloucestershire, England. The world body is the Badminton World Federation, founded in 1934 as the International Badminton Federation and renamed BWF in 2006; its headquarters are in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In India the game is run by the Badminton Association of India, formed in 1934. Badminton became a full medal sport at the Barcelona Olympics of 1992.

The court, the shuttle and the scoring

Since 2006 badminton uses rally point scoring: every rally wins a point whoever served, a game is of 21 points and a match is the best of three games. At 20–20 a side must lead by two clear points, and if the score reaches 29–29 the thirtieth point decides the game.

Terms and the umpire's cards

Smash, drop shot, clear, drive, net shot, lift, let, fault, deuce, love-all, rally and service court all belong to badminton. The umpire shows a yellow card as a warning, a red card for a fault that gives the opponent a point, and a black card for disqualification from the match.

Badminton's team and open championships

India's record is worth memorising. Prakash Padukone became the first Indian to win the All England title, in 1980, and Pullela Gopichand won it in 2001. Saina Nehwal took the Olympic bronze at London in 2012, the country's first Olympic medal in the game, and reached world number one in 2015. P. V. Sindhu won silver at Rio in 2016 and bronze at Tokyo in 2020, and in 2019 became the first Indian to win gold at the BWF World Championships. India won the Thomas Cup for the first time in 2022, beating Indonesia in the final.

Table tennis: the table, the ball and the scoring

Table tennis, also called ping-pong, is governed by the International Table Tennis Federation, founded in 1926, with its headquarters at Lausanne in Switzerland; the Table Tennis Federation of India runs the game at home. It entered the Olympic programme at Seoul in 1988.

A game is of 11 points, changed from 21 in 2001, and a match is the best of five or seven games. Service changes after every two points, and at 10–10 a player must win by two clear points. The ball was 38 mm across until 2000 and celluloid until plastic balls came in from 2014.

Table tennis trophies, terms and India

The world team championships carry two cups: the Swaythling Cup for men's teams and the Corbillon Cup for women's teams. Chop, loop, drive, block, topspin, backspin, blade, rubber and let are its terms, and the two grips are the penhold and the shakehand. Achanta Sharath Kamal has been India's most decorated player, and Manika Batra won the women's singles gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast, the first Indian to do so.