2026 INDIA OPEN | BIRD DROPPINGS AND MONKEY SIGHTINGS

I have something against badminton.

It’s deceptively hard.

You’d think it’s just a game your yaya and your sister play on the side of the street, using a subpar racket and a near-balding shuttlecock, but it’s not. I tried playing during the badminton boom, and after one game, I can safely say that the pro players have to be robots to sustain that level of play for an hour.

And yeah, I don’t blame them for eating bananas in the middle of the game.

Anyway, while I don’t know much about the sport, I do like checking out how countries organize tournaments. Needless to say, holding a badminton tournament in India feels doable, but only under the right conditions.

The 2026 India Open was supposed to be the gauge for whether the country could host the World Championships. If you think Thailand’s SEA Games problems were over the top, this tournament is on another level.

For starters, they have an animal problem. Bird droppings may be unsanitary, but I guess that can’t be helped. Maybe in the next tournament, they can put tarps over the roof so birds won’t get inside. However, monkeys sitting in the stands and almost interacting with the audience is far from acceptable. How will the world react if a scandal happens because organizers weren’t brave enough to shoo monkeys away from disrupting the action? You also can’t really say these monkeys aren’t carriers of diseases. I know monkeys are almost as common as cats in India, but for the rest of the world, seeing one loose in the venue is insane.

This also says a lot about the organizers’ ability to find a better arena. The players involved have teams and sponsors. In a world where almost everyone has the capacity to film and blog about their experience, the last thing you want is foreigners blasting the country online.

And how about the lighting? Badminton is a game of hand-eye coordination. How can players concentrate, aside from the fear of stepping on bird poop, if the lighting feels like it belongs in a billiard hall, a bowling alley, or a pro wrestling match?

While Indians may be used to pollution, the rest of the world isn’t. Having a high pollution index combined with poor accommodations is a bad mix.

When the Philippines hosted the FIBA World Cup, our biggest problem was traffic. It’s an issue we can’t solve right now, but no one could really complain about our facilities, especially since Araneta and Mall of Asia have malls right next to them. I know badminton isn’t as big as basketball, but the arena experience still has to be enjoyable. Sometimes, these first-world countries judge a place based on experience, and the last thing anyone wants is global backlash over how bad their time in the country was.