Parupalli Kashyap is on the road to recovery and is featuring in his first event after his shoulder injury layoff. But the Thailand GPG authorities are showing him no mercy, as he was forced to play 2 matches in the space of 12 hours, something that is just not acceptable at the international level.
Kashyap has gone out and questioned the authorities about this scheduling, as he feels that no athlete should be made to play twice in such a short span of time.
Kashyap won his first round encounter against Slovakia’s Milan Dratva, a match that started at 12 am in the night and ended by 2 am. His second round match was then scheduled at 12 pm on the same day, giving him less than 10 hours to recuperate.
Ridiculous scheduling and refereeing . First round at 12/1 am and second round at 12pm . #thailandGPG @bwfmedia Stupidity! @bwf_ac
— Parupalli Kashyap (@parupallik) May 30, 2017
Finally the end of round 1! Round 2 in 12hrs!!! #thailandgpg
— Parupalli Kashyap (@parupallik) May 30, 2017
“It (hectic scheduling) happens very rarely but at the qualifying rounds at the Super Series events, it happens all the time. The delay was not the issue, delays happen very often because sometimes there are too many matches which extend longer than scheduled,” said Kashyap in an interview with FirstPost.
Kashyap said that he understood the organisers’ stand as well, but during the qualifiers it just becomes too hectic for the players.
“The issue was that the matches got delayed and the match that I was supposed to play at 9:30 pm, I ended up playing at 2:00 am. Before the schedule came out, I informed the referee about it and requested him to put my second round after 4 or 5 pm on the next day so that I can rest adequately as my match got delayed a lot.”
“But instead of saying ‘okay’, he (referee) said he can’t guarantee it and that he could only schedule it post 11:30 am and finally it became 11:55 am. We again complained once the schedule was out and then he pushed it to 2:55 pm,”
Kashyap essentially got just 7 hours to rest for his second round, as he reached his hotel by 4 am, and was supposed to reach the arena an hour before to get his warm up started.
“So, my tweet was just for them to understand that there should be some consideration as to which players played late and schedule their match accordingly later for the next round,” he said.
Hopefully the authorities look into this and make the scheduling a little less taxing for the players
