Hendra Setiawan Talks About 3v3 Badminton Prospects

Hendra Setiawan (second from the right) at the launch of BDMNTN-XL (VOI/Cosmas Kopong Beda).

JAKARTA The men's doubles specialist Hendra Setiawan saw 3v3 badminton contested in a tournament titled BDMNTN-XL next month with promising prospects.

BDMNTN-XL is planned to be held from October 31 to November 3, 2024 at Istora Senayan, Jakarta. A number of the world's top badminton stars also enlivened the event.

The tournament was present and revolutionized badminton in an unprecedented format. One of them is the duel between three players against three players.

Hendra said that this format would present an exciting game. Although they have never been in an official tournament, they have often applied the 3v3 format in practice.

"Usually in exciting training, but this time two boys are one girl. So, we'll see, but I'm sure it's still fun. Couples from world top players," said Hendra when met in Jakarta.

The BDMNTN-XL will be attended by four teams, namely Blitzers, Hurricanes, Lightning, and Rocket. Each team consists of seven players (four men and three women).

In 3v3 matches, the team captain can make substitutions without limits. Therefore, it opens up the possibility of tactical intelligence emerging to the surface.

In addition to the revolution in the new format as described above, this tournament also uses a time limit in each game. Each match consists of four games, each with a duration of 10 minutes with a tiebreaker sudden-death if the score draws 2-2.

Men's doubles player Fajar Alfian said that the deadline per game in a tournament could allow matches to run with more challenging intensity.

"The rules use good time. Ordinary matches can take more than two hours, but this is a maximum of 40 minutes and not bored for sure," he said.

Other Indonesian badminton stars who took part in the tournament with a prize of 1 million US dollars include All England 2024 champion Jonathan Christie and gold medalist at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Greysia Polii.

The top names in the world that were also present included the former world number Viktor Axelsen (Denmark) and the 2013 world champion from Thailand, Ratchanok Intanon.