(From left) KO George, Firas Bakhash, Saleh Sulaiman SJ al-Abdullah, Ashraf Usman and Pavan Kumar are seen at the press meet to announce the first edition of Kings GCC Open and International Badminton Tournament, beginning at the Micheal E Debakey High School in Madinat Khalifa from May 23 to June 1. Top players from India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines will be taking part in the 10-day meet.
By Sports Reporter/Doha
The first Kings GCC Open and International Badminton Tournament, which will be held at Micheal E Debakey High School in Madinat Khalifa from May 23 to June 1, will see participation of many of the world ranking and top GCC players.
The tournament is being organised by Kings Club, which has conducted two Qatar Open tournaments in 2007 and 2009.
“This is the first international badminton tournament to be held in Qatar after 2006 Asia Games in which several players ranked in the top 100 in the world will take part,” president of the tournament organising committee, KO George, told Gulf Times on Saturday.
“The GCC open will begin with 23 events for all age groups, with 60 overseas entries for more than 500 matches,” he said.
The tournament is structured with two finals — GCC on May 30 and International on June 1. The semi-finalist of the GCC events will qualify for the international event so that they can get the experience to compete with world ranking players.
The international event will begin on May 31 in which seeded players from Malaysia, India, Indonesia and Philippines will take part.
Top seeded players include Robert Blair of Scotland, Bin Shen Tan and Kong Keat Zhen of Malaysia, KT Rupesh Kumar and Sanave Thomas of India, Antonino Gadi and Wilfred Natividad of Philippines.
The centre of attraction at the event will be the participation of successful Indian doubles pair of Kumar and Thomas.
The duo has significant achievements over the last decade. The pair has won doubles title at Bitburger Open defeating Chris Adcock and Andrew Ellies of England in 2010. They were also part of the Indian team, which won silver medal in New Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010. They have also won the Indian national doubles title in the past.
Competitions will be held across five categories - men’s singles and doubles, women’s singles and doubles and mixed doubles. The tournament carries a prize money corpus of QR100,000.