Badminton tiebreaks worth looking at - official

BIRMINGHAM, England - Tiebreaks could be used to shorten matches and help to stop very late finishes at major tournaments, Badminton England chief executive Adrian Christy suggested on Thursday.

Christy floated the idea after Wednesday's All England badminton tournament opening day lasted for nearly 17 hours and ended just before 0300 local time (GMT).

Organisers had to pack in 80 matches on four courts but were undone by the large number of games that went to three sets and were keenly fought in the chase for Olympic qualification points.

"We could start a day earlier, go back to five courts. That would have reduced the day but it would still have been a long one," Christy told a news conference.

"Maybe one thing we should be looking at doing is introducing some sort of tiebreak where you can almost dictate or determine the maximum length of the games.

"But these are just off-the-cuff thoughts that we want to work through with the Badminton World Federation (BWF)."

He added: "It's fair to say there will be some changes but it's hard to say what they will be at this stage."

Wednesday's play over-ran by some four hours with only four courts being used instead of five and 35 minutes estimated for each match.

Former title winner Peter Gade of Denmark was the highest-profile loser, bowing out in his final appearance at the tournament to English champion Rajiv Ouseph.

The pair started their match at 0110 and Ouseph triumphed 17-21 21-16 21-14 to claim possibly the biggest win of his career, with hardly anyone watching.

Gade, 35, All England champion in 1999, said: "No matter how crazy it sounds we sort of expected this could happen because we saw the way they planned the tournament. Thirty-five minutes for each game: that's impossible."

Christy said on Thursday: "I was surprised at 35 minutes. If that's what we're scheduling on a regular basis that needs to be looked at."

BWF Events Director Darren Parks said: "I guess we were victims of our own success in one respect in that the actual matches have been tremendously compelling and really exciting and very close and we actually had quite a few three-setters.

"What we have got here are top-ranked players so you have very closely fought matches which is right. Do we want to be finishing at three a.m.? No. and that's something we are going to have to look at and see how we can solve that for the future."