Badminton Connect brings the lovers of the sport together, and they decided to put this to good use with a fund-raiser for hurricane relief in the Philippines
Badminton is very popular in most parts of Aisa. When Ganga Rao and partners of his business were studying here in Australia in the 80s, they used to get together to play the sport.
They are all in various professions now but continue to meet to play badminton. The idea for a common place to play badminton came about very naturally and organically.
Ganga says he is happy to be involved in something that he likes so much. He is keen on making the new venture a success. He was looking for ways to do some promotional event for the centre, which is when he came upon an idea of making it a fund-raising event for hurricane relief efforts in the Philippines.
“As a business we wanted to promote the place but at the same when the hurricane happened, it was a very timely thing to do something worthwhile towards a cause like that,” he says.
“We want to connect with the public. We’ve been in operation for about five months. At the moment, it is a sport that is dominated by Asians in Australia,” he adds.
For those who are not familiar with badminton terminology, the smash is the killer hit, the one that gets you the point. In badminton, the serve is the slowest point in the game. It builds from there till the “smash”, which is when the ball is in play at its fastest.
“We’ve been playing badminton for a long time and yet none of us knew how fast our smashes were,” says Ganga, and adds that there was a lot of interest from the public to find out their smash speed.
“It was great that the organisation who does the speed for world champions could offer this service for free,” Ganga said.
The fastest smash was clocked at 240 kph.
“A lot of us are already in the sport. Many of us of have studied here and played here. We wanted to take it a step further and get our own centre where we could make the facilities available for everyone,” he says.
Ganga says he did not know what his smash speed was either so it was good for him to find out. “It was good to know where we stand,” he says.
“We did minimal promotion and we about hundred people turn up. We did it for a couple of hours,” adds Ganga.
The fees paid to the centre was then collected and contributed to Red Cross Australia who has directed it towards the hurricane relief efforts.
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