Kuala Lumpur: The Badminton World Federation (BWF) yesterday announced it will freeze World Rankings and World Junior Rankings until further notice.
"Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the badminton community has experienced an unprecedented suspension to international tournaments from mid-March 2020 to the end of April 2020," the governing body announced yesterday.
"At present, it is difficult to predict when the next international tournament will take place with further tournaments also expected to be suspended in May and June. The freezing of rankings will be backdated to Week 12, which is the week following the last international tournament that was played – the YONEX All England Open 2020. The ranking lists issued on 17 March 2020 will serve as a basis for entry and seeding into the next international tournaments – although it is difficult to say at this stage when this may be," a statement appeared on the BWF's official web site stated.
BWF will provide more information in due course regarding the process as to how the rankings will eventually be ‘unfrozen’ following the commencement of the international circuit.
However, it is difficult to outline the exact procedure until we have an exact overview of what the international calendar will look like once play resumes and suspended tournaments have been rescheduled.
"We are seeking to define a solution to unfreeze the rankings in a staggered way to avoid any extreme drop off of points from previous tournaments causing an extreme impact on the ranking structure," the statement read.
"Following the announcement to reschedule the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, BWF will now also initiate a review process to confirm any impacts on the Olympic qualification system," the statement read.
