4-nation MoU to boost badminton devel

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Ng (second left) with (from left) Oei, Nigon and Han during the press conference.

KUCHING: Four countries have embarked on a junior exchange programme with the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at the Sarawak Indoor Stadium on Saturday.

The countries are represented by the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM), the Badminton Association of Thailand Under Royal Patronage of His Majesty The King, Persatuan Bulutangkis Seluruh Indonesia and Badminton Korea Association.

The signatories are Datuk Ng Chin Chai for Malaysia, Air Marshal Associate Professor Nigon Chummankul for Thailand, Han Woo Goo for South Korea and Oei Wijanarko Adi Mulya for Indonesia.

“Under this exchange programme, partner countries will endeavour to conduct joint training and competitions for a period of seven to 14 days each for the joint camp at various levels from national under-15, under-17, under-19 up to national back-up team,” BAM secretary Datuk Ng Chin Chai told reporters in a press conference.

According to Ng, all partner countries shall host a joint camp once in four years on a rotational basis on mutually agreed dates.

“The maximum of players from each visiting country is 16 and number of officials is four respectively for each joint camp.

“The host country will provide and bear the costs of accommodation, food, internal transport and training facilities for the joint camp while the visiting countries shall bear the travelling costs to/from the venue decided by the host country,” added Ng.

He said whenever any partner country hosts an international event, the other partners shall send their top players within the level of the tournament to participate in the tournament and in return the host country will provide and bear the costs of three hotel rooms to each visiting partner country as well as four additional complimentary accreditations and reasonable additional practice session at the tournament venue to each visiting partner country.

The partner countries will further collaborate on the exchange of technical officials, coaching, training, development and sports science aspect of badminton.

Ng said the exchange programme will benefit the younger players because there are not many junior tournaments when compared to the senior tournaments organized every year.

“Take Malaysia for example, we only participate in 53 Open events whereas we take part in only 12 junior events every year.

“The junior players lack sparring and training facilities and to go for joint training it is cheaper to help develop the younger players rather than sending them to tournaments where they lose in the first round,” he pointed out.