NEW DELHI, July 31: The top bosses of the Badminton Federation of India (BAI) stayed away from the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium on the opening day of the Air-India Open Major Ranking Tournament.

They were either plain lucky, or had stumbled upon the obvious in time to stage their vanishing act. There was enough indication of the turn of events, yesterday, when leading shuttlers pulled out of the contest. Today, the death blow was dealt when none of the Railway players, whose entries were sent in by the Railway Sports Control Board, bothered to turn up.

Even as the technical bench jotted the list of walkovers awarded a total of 12 the air of futility which hung heavily in the humid venue painted a brooding picture of what awaits the present administrative set-up.The pull-out by Railways' players meant that the tournament was deprived of whatever mileage the organisers, or the BAI, must have hoped for as Madhumita Bisht, Sindhu Gulati and Srikant Bakshi stayed away.Probably the biggest blow must be the absence of promising junior, Sachin Ratti, thus shattering BAI's hopes of flaunting all juniors who matter in this meet. Not to forget the fact that another top junior Siddharth Jain had already pulled out of the event reportedly due to injury.

The farce was complete when only three entries were received from South India and one from Delhi, the venue of the meet. In fact, the qualifying rounds which was slotted for the day never took off with the number of entries, or lack of it.In the event, the only action worth jotting down was the progress of Abhin Shyam Gupta of Air India, who blanked Harsh Vardhan of Uttar Pradesh 15-0, 15-0.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.