No doubt, you enjoyed batting a red, rubber-tipped "birdie" back-and-forth to your childhood friends -- but, when the adults put up the badminton net, you knew the fun was about to get serious. In fact, the addition of a net barrier to the game of badminton elevated the popular, recreational past time to a competitive, world class sport.
Badminton History
Sports historian Dr. Jean-Yves Guillain has studied badminton in great depth and claims that China invented the first game using a birdie, or shuttlecock, in 2,500 B.C. The players kicked the shuttlecock in a similar fashion to football. From the 13th through 15th centuries, Japan played a variation of the shuttlecock game -- first with a wooden bat, and later with a trapezoidal shaped racket.
Badminton may have evolved from two children's games played in ancient Greece and in 16th century India: Battledore and shuttlecock. Instead of hitting the projectile across a net, Indian children volleyed the shuttlecock with paddles across a line. The University of Southern Mississippi identifies another Indian sport -- poona -- as the direct predecessor to contemporary Badminton. British soldiers brought the game -- played in open air, sans net -- to England in the 1860s.
First Badminton "Net"
British aristocrats may have used a string before installing the first real net to separate participants when they played a popular game of "Ball Badminton" in the 1850s. Instead of shuttlecocks, the players volleyed aerodynamic, yellow woolen balls across the barrier. The addition of the badminton net made the game more challenging and competitive.
Net Construction And Specifications
According to Steve Boga, author of the book, "Badminton," Americans started playing the game in 1878 at posh social clubs such as the Badminton Club of the City of New York. At these events, the nets were attached to festive, decorated poles at heights varying from 5 1/2 to 6 feet. Although badminton experienced a decline in the U.S. in the years leading up to World War II, fish netting manufacturers began producing sports nets in the 1940s to meet the surging demand of post-World War II athletics enthusiasts.
Modern Badminton Nets
Regulations for the sport of badminton are published by the Badminton World Federation in its Laws of Badminton. According to the 2010/2011 BWF Handbook II, the badminton net shall be made of fine, dark cord of even thickness. The mesh size should be no less than 15 mm or more than 20 mm. The net should be 760 mm deep and a minimum of 6.1 m wide. The top of the net should measure 1.524 meters from the surface of the court at the court center and 1.55 meters over the side lines for games in which there are two players per team.
References
- History of Badminton.com: Badminton Origins
- University of Southern Mississippi: The History of Badminton
- History of Badminton.com: Birth of the Anglo-Indian Game of Badminton
- The Online Guide to Traditional Games: Battledore and Shuttlecock
- "Badminton"; Steve Boga; 1996
- Carron Net Company, Inc.: About Us
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