[transcript]
Since we started making these analysis videos about two weeks ago, we’ve gotten a lot of requests for analysis and advice for other badminton events like doubles.
Don’t worry, we heard you. Today we’ll be giving four tips on doubles rotation and positioning that’ll help you play doubles better.
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First, let’s talk about watching the cross when you’re in the front.
When you play doubles, a general rule of thumb is to cover what your partner is unable to cover.
While most of the time it’s pretty self-explanatory, there are a couple of situations where it may be confusing.
One of these situations is when your team is attacking and you’re standing in the front.
Something that happens far too often is the front player not paying attention and failing to cut off the cross. This situation often leads your partner to scramble to the next shot and end up playing a defensive shot.
Doing this puts your team in a defensive position and it’s almost always harder to win off of defense versus attack.
Instead, if you want to keep the attack while you’re in the front, you need to watch the cross, specifically the flatter cross drives and blocks.
Now you may have noticed that players often stand very close to the straight. If you watch the close ups, however, you’ll see that most are actually prepared for the cross.
This is what you should be doing too. The straight shot is still a likely and fast shot you need to cover so you do need to stand where it’s easy to cover both.
Additionally, take a look at how these players stand on the left side of the court compared to the right side.
What you’ll notice is that right-handed front players usually hover more toward their left. One reason is because playing shots on that left side will often require right handers to turn and use their backhand, which is generally a slower and more awkward movement compared to moving to the forehand side. Left handed players are the opposite.
You’ll also notice that front players stand further back when their partner is at the back smashing. This gives you more time to react to a cross shot should it come.
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The second piece of advice we have in this video is to shift on defense towards the side that you lift.
You do this for the same reason as singles as the straight is typically the fastest shot. In doubles, however, you can shift more aggressively because the court is wider and you have a partner.
Additionally, one small thing you can do as well if you’re the one receiving the cross attacking shot is to move up a little bit. This is because the cross shot will typically be slower and it’ll likely have to pass the net through the middle which gives you an opportunity to cut the shuttle off if you’re there early.
Edging up also helps reduce confusion as to who is covering the middle drops as the person standing higher up will be the one receiving them. Keep in mind that it’s a very small adjustment though and you’ll edge up more or less depending on the lift you play. If you play a flatter and faster lift where your opponent doesn’t have that much time to smash super hard, you can position yourself higher.
On defense, you also want to watch your feet positioning. Typically, you want to either put your right or left foot back depending on if the lift is toward the right or left side respectively. This is to anticipate the straight shot and give you space to play different shots.
You can also default to putting your dominant leg back if you don’t know where the smash is coming. This will make it easier to play from the defensive shot from your hip and protect you from the deadly body smash in doubles.
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On the topic of defense, a common question is, where do I move after lifting the shuttle?
Most of the time, the person who is playing the lift will move straight backward. If you’re playing the lift in the middle area, then you’ll typically return to the side you started on.
What’s more important to understand, however, is that the player at the front cannot see behind them. Thus, in awkward situations where the rotation gets messed up, the front player needs to commit to one side while the back player reacts to what the front player does.
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Now, we talked about defense quite a bit in this video, but ultimately, you’re not going to win most doubles matches by only playing defense.
So the real question is, how do you turn defense into offense?
Part of it has to do with the shot you play and the other part with where you’re moving depending on the shot.
On defense, there are two main shots that you can use to help you rotate into offense. These shots are the drive block and soft block.
In both cases, you want to start moving forward to attack your opponent’s net shots or drives. As you do this, your partner should generally start moving toward the back to assume a front and back attacking position.
At a more advanced level and especially for mixed doubles where there are dedicated front and back players, you want to think about your shot a little more as well.
If you’re defending and want to rotate into the back, you need to place your defensive shot into a position where it’s easy for your partner to get. Most of the time, this means blocking in the middle.
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I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you have any feedback or suggestions for future videos, please feel free to leave them in the comment section below. We always read the comments and keep the suggestions in mind when making videos even if we don’t always respond.
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