Grassroots rethink

THE BA of Malaysia (BAM) will start looking beyond Bukit Jalil Sports School (BJSS)-based national juniors for talent.
BAM development chairman David Wee has also proposed an eight-year development programme where a bigger pool of talent will be identified and nurtured at State level.
Wee stated the new programme should be geared towards the 2020 Olympics and the current batch of national junior and senior shuttlers will not be part of the set-up.
The idea, said Wee, came about after he had a discussion with former national doubles chief coach Park Joo Bong who gave some input on the decentralised system used by Japan.

The South Korean is Japan's head coach.
"We have to start looking beyond BJSS to identify a bigger pool of talent. The new programme will focus on talent identification and  players as young as seven  will be part of the programme where training will be conducted at the state level," said Wee.
"It will be an open system where the composition of the players can be changed from time to time. These players need not be attached to BJSS for at the moment, the national team is congested.
"I  had a discussion with Joo Bong in Shanghai in December where he gave us his views based on the Japanese system where   development and  national team training are decentralised.
"There is no move to decentralise the national team training but the system will be good for the new programme where we will be dealing with Under-12 players.
"These players will also be brought on short attachment stints, especially during school holidays, to train at the national training centre in Kuala Lumpur on a regular basis.
"BAM is also in the midst of allocating sufficient funding for the states to launch their own development programme on a bigger scale and there should be some good news in a couple of months."
BJSS has been the home of national juniors of various age groups for more than a decade and there are at least 60 players in the school at any one time but BAM has been struggling to find future potentials on a regular basis.
Although there has been a steady flow of doubles players, singles is where Malaysia has been hit hard and the fact that the nation's brightest prospects Zulfadli Zulkifli and Misbun Ramdan Misbun are not products of BJSS is a clear sign that the current programme at the grassroots is not effective.
Courtesy of New Straits Times