Badminton for Beginners

Last week my workmates and I gathered at Flavours bar for a few after work lagers and before too long we had quite a gathering of girlfriends, wives and, to my pleasant surprise, my neighbor Michael. Michael had introduced himself on our adjoining rooftops a week earlier and as it turns out he knows my MD and works in a similar field. As we sipped a few Lao beers at Flavours, he casually mentioned that he played Badminton twice a week with a diverse bunch and I told him I would be eager to play if he was ever short. I remember vaguely watching people play at my local park when I was a young kid and figured although the racket was smaller than that used in tennis, it couldn’t be too dissimilar and as the shuttlecock was effectively a ball with a parachute on it , there would therefore be more time to get to it ( as it floated serenely down from the skies ) and therefore also there would not be so much running around etc. How wrong I would be!

My SMS call up came the very next week.” Badminton 7pm ….be ready! “and I was soon following Michael across Phnom Penh on our bikes to a University where they have a purpose built Badminton court housed in a huge cavernous hall with cathedral like ceilings, exposed beams and resident sparrows flying around. My fellow badminton players were all German with the exception of one reserved American and after exchanging brief pleasantries it was onto the serious business of badminton. At this stage I should point out that the temperature in the hall was in the 30s and I was sweating profusely even after the “warm up”. “hot up” would be more precise! The sweat was running into my eyes and stinging them and making the little racquet extremely hard to grip and I was scared at some stage I might let go of it and it would fly across the room and hit a German in the head and start WW111.

It soon became evident that these guys were s e r i o u s about their badminton. There was a lot of grunting, a lot of posturing like the Chinese Olympic team and very few words of encouragement for me as I toiled hard at holding my end up. They were good too. Jan was an ace, Paul had the legs of an Ibis and so covered my ass effortlessly, Gido was a smasher ( his preferred shot being to propel the shuttlecock straight at you so you copped it in the chest ) and Michael the strategist. Games were won at the 21 point mark and after guzzling a litre of water in a minute it was a change in pairs and then back onto the court for some more thrusting and parrying. The reason for the tall roof became evident as one of the popular shots of the night was a skyward THWACK that sent the shuttlecock into a moon-like orbit. You could almost sit down and relax while it went through its trajectory and then choose whether or not to send it back into orbit or slice it across the net.

After an hour of this I had to excuse, myself to farewell some friends and was quite grateful for the escape as by this time I was swimming in my own body juices. They had all bought towels and large bottles of iced water but there was no sharing. I watched with envy as they toweled themselves down and could only think about the shower later as my armpits squelched and my eyes stung. However, it was bloody enjoyable! What a top way to spend a $1 and an hour. Some shots left me with my arms feeling like they were going to pop out of their sockets as I reached for that elusive shuttlecock and I am sure the detoxifying effects of all that sweating were worth it alone. As I said my farewells I asked for the address of a good sports store so I can procure my own little mosquito swatter and I really hope I get asked again. Next time I will have my own towel and my own water and I am sure this will give me the edge I need to take on the Huns and win !