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2005 New Zealand 21s Champs
 The
2005 New Zealand 21s Champs was held at the Waitakere Badminton
Association between the 8th and 10th of April 2005. In past years,
this tournament has been held later in the year, at the same time
as the New Zealand International. However, because the NZ International
has been upgraded to a 1* event, the 21s Champs were moved to this
earlier time.
Badminton New Zealand decided that this tournament would be ideal
for trialling the experimental rally point scoring
system. In this system:
- A point is earned for every rally, regardless
of who serves.
- All matches consist of 3 games to 21 points.
- If a game reaches 20-All, play continues until one of the sides
has an advantage of 2 points (e.g. 24-22).
- However, if the score reaches 30-All, the winner of the next
rally wins the match (i.e. 31-30 is the maximum score possible).
The links below take you to PDF documents of all of the results,
match length analyses, a full match analysis and a listing of the
umpires who officiated. (Please contact
me if you require copies of the original Excel spreadsheets.)
Interesting Statistics
The following can be gleaned from a study of the above documents:
- A total of 88 matches were played in the tournament.
- Of these, 21 matches (just less than a quarter)
went to 3 games.
- The columns labelled T1, T2 and T3 contain times for each game,
where these were recorded by the umpire. The shortest
timed game was 5 minutes. The longest was 14
minutes.
- Note that the average lengths of the timed games increased during
the matches. i.e. on average, the first game of a match was the
shortest and the third game was the longest. This probably demonstrates
that the players were getting tired, rather than that the rallies
were getting longer, although the number of points scored per
game did increase in the same manner (see below).
- 81 matches had match times recorded. The remaining 7 were assigned
a time based on the average rally time (RT) for the event. e.g.
In the match between Alan Chan and Mark Robertson, a total of
72 points were scored, which implies 72 rallies. This was multiplied
by the average rally time (RT) for the Men's Singles event (0.262
minutes), arriving at a time of 18.864 minutes. There were 2 games
in the match, so an additional 90 seconds was added (time between
first and second game), and the final time was rounded, giving
20 minutes.
- The shortest match was 11 minutes.
- The longest match was 41 minutes.
- The average match length was just under 22 minutes.
- Women's doubles tended to last the longest (28 minutes on average).
Mixed doubles tended to be the shortest (18 minutes on average).
However, this is based on a relatively small number of games (especially
the women's doubles), so this statistic would have a fairly high
margin of error.
- 62 matches were umpired by official umpires,
including one IBF umpire, two Oceania umpires and three National
umpires. The other matches were umpired by players. 16 of the
matches also had service judges assigned. (In addition to this,
most matches had at least one line judge, with two line judges
for all main draw final matches.)
- The column labelled GT contains the average game time for the
matches, calculated by taking the official match time, subtracting
90 seconds for the break between games 1 and 2, and where applicable
subtracting 5 minutes for the break between games 2 and 3, and
dividing by the number of games in the match. The shortest
average game time was 5 minutes. The longest
was 14 minutes. (Exactly the same as the timed games!)
- The columns labelled P1, P2 and P3 contain the total number
of points scored in games 1, 2 and 3 respectively. The column
labelled P contains the total number of points scored for the
match. The least number of points scored (rallies) was
24 (i.e. the score was 21-3). The most number
of points scored (rallies) was 46 (i.e. the score was
24-22).
- The average number of points scored per game
increased marginally during the matches - just under 35 points
for the first game, just over 35 points for the second game and
just under 37 points for the third game.
- The least amount of points scored for an entire match
was 52 (i.e. 52 rallies during the match). The most
amount of points scored for an entire match was 124 (i.e.
124 rallies during the match). The average number of points
scored was just less than 78½.
- The column labelled RT contains the average time per
rally for a match. This was calculated by taking the
official match time and dividing it by the total number of rallies
(total number of points scored). The shortest average
rally time for a match was 8 seconds per rally. The longest
average rally time for a match was just under 24 seconds per rally.
The average rally time for the entire tournament was 14½
seconds.
- Women's doubles had the longest average rally time (just over
16 seconds per rally). Mixed doubles had the shortest average
rally time (just over 13 seconds per rally).
Comments on Umpiring
Umpiring proved to be particularly challenging, especially for
doubles and mixed doubles. The following documents were prepared
prior to the tournament to assist the umpires in filling out the
score sheet:
In Word Format:
In Excel Format:
If you don't have access to Microsoft Word or Excel, or if the
above don't open correctly, you could try the following links which
are the same documents in PDF format (note that a couple of the
documents got a bit corrupted in the PDF conversion!):
In PDF Format:
Please note the following important differences...
- All matches, including Women's Singles, are the best of three
games to to 21.
- In this system, you do not have to say "Are you setting"...
Ever! There is no setting in rally point scoring.
Note that we decided to introduce the
terminology "Advantage by 2 points" when the score reached
20-All in any game.
- If the score reaches 20-All, the winner is the first side to
gain a 2 point advantage (e.g. 24-22 or 30-28), unless
the score reaches 30-All, in which case the side that wins the
next rally wins the game (31-30).
- In singles, the players always start serving
in the opposite service court to where they served
when they lost the serve, because when they regain the serve they
will also gain a point.
- In doubles, the players always start serving
in the same service court to where they served
when they lost the serve, because when they regain the serve they
will have gained two points.
- In doubles, because the receiver at the beginning of a game
earns a single point by virtue of winning a rally
served by their opponent, the receivers will start
serving in the opposite service court to what
you would expect. i.e. If player A is receiving in the right service
court at the beginning of a game, they will start
serving from the right service court when they have 1 point (i.e.
when their score is ODD), so they will always
be the opposite way around to what you would ordinarily expect.
The issue of which doubles player is serving or receiving proved
to be the most difficult and challenging, especially for the side
that was receiving at the beginning of a game. The point where most
mistakes were made was when the serving side was on second server.
At this stage, the receiving side has earned 1
point from their opponent and is therefore "on the wrong side"
for as many rallies as it takes for the server to lose their second
serve. Then the receivers get another point, so they are back on
the "correct side", but they have often gotten mixed up
in the meantime and changed to the "wrong side" - very
confusing!
For more information or to discuss any of the points raised here,
please contact me.
Compiled by Mike Wright
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