Through a virtual conference, BWF President Poul-Erik Høyer, BWF Secretary General Thomas Lund and BWF Deputy President Khunying Patama Leeswadtrakul answered some of the questions that have been concerning the badminton community.

President Høyer shared his sympathy with the players who have been in difficulty because of the absence of tournaments. He said, “We (BWF) are here for the players and we’re trying our best to get tournaments up and running.”

Secretary General Lund pointed out that all possible measures have been taken up for the resumption of tournaments and that the DANISA Denmark Open would mark the return of badminton after March.

He added that the planned November set of Asian was simply not possible because “setting up that level of events is a complex and big exercise.” He said due to the time constraints November was not a viable choice, and that the decision to move to January was the best “to get the logistic arrangements in place.”

Lund explained the difficulty in getting safety tournament environment for “getting that many people together in one location” He said that the safety cluster in Thailand was what the BWF has worked to maintain so that a number of tournaments could be played in the same location.

He added, “We are looking into whether we can replicate that into further clusters in 2021…This could be a blueprint on how we can conduct tournaments in an Asian leg, and how we can move that on in further cluster tournaments. But there are financial complexities that we are working to get through.”

Deputy president Leeswadtrakul, who is also the President of the Badminton Association of Thailand (BAT), was confident that Thailand would deliver high-quality cluster in Bangkok and she even invited journalists to attend the tournaments.

She added, “We have consulted with numerous Thai authorities to decide the most effective Covid-19 safety measure. We came up with the bubble protocols which will be implemented during that period.”