Defending In Badminton Doubles – Body And Racket Positioning

Featured Image: Pierre-Yves Beaudouin / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

When defending in badminton doubles, it’s important to set your body and racket correctly before playing and defensive shot. By doing so, you achieve a stable base from which to play your defensive shot and minimise the time it takes to move your racket into position to play your shot. In doubles, the shuttle comes at you extremely quickly so efficiency in your movements is key!

Body Positioning

A defensive stance in badminton is characterised by a low centre of gravity and being square onto the net. In order to lower your centre of gravity, you must spread your legs a little wider than shoulder-width apart and bend your knees. This lowers your upper body over a broad base and therefore lowers your centre of gravity. This is the basic position when defending in badminton doubles and to some extent singles.

The reasons for this stance are:

1. Stable Base. Like any shot in badminton, you need to be in balance. Keeping your centre of gravity low ensures that you are playing your shot from a stable, balanced position. This, in turn, will impress upon the quality of your shot.
2. Faster movement. Being low means that you’re able to quickly move forward and backwards in case the opponent plays a drop or clear. The split step is an important aspect of footwork to allow this to happen.
3. Racket position. From this crouched position, the racket will naturally fall to the right height to receive a smash, unless you make a conscious effort to change in what position you hold your racket.

You should face towards the direction the shuttle is coming from. This means if it is coming cross court you should position your body so it’s pointing cross-court towards the opponent who is smashing.

Unlike an attacking position, where you are side on to strike the shuttle, in a defensive position you face the net square on. This makes it easier to cover a range of smashes from your opponent.

Racket Position

The racket should not be biased towards the forehand or backhand side exclusively. If you do this and the opponent smashes to the opposite side of your body your defence will be tangled. You will not be able to retrieve any shots effectively on the unguarded side of your body, if at all! So it is best for the racket to be in a neutral position when receiving a  smash.

However, when you’re defending a cross-court smash, is it different? Let’s take a look at the situation in the below image.

Defensive Racket Position In Badminton Doubles
Image: BWF

The male player (Yuta Watanabe) in the defensive position on the right, holds his racket so that he does not favour either the forehand or backhand side. He is ready for any likely straight smash to him and can adequately cover all angles of smash.

His partner (Arisa Higashino) is also not biasing her racket position to either side and has set herself to defend the cross-court smash. You should notice that there’s actually a significant gap on the court that the attacking male player (Lee Yang) can play into.  That is the tramlines of the left-hand side of the picture. So you might assume she would bias her defence to her forehand in order to cover this area. Wrong!

If she did this, the vulnerable areas now become body smashes and shots down the middle. Particularly shots down the middle which is slightly closer to her. By remaining in a neutral position, she reduces the areas which might be a winning shot to just one area on the court as opposed to two.

Also, bearing in mind her partner is a lefty and she is right-handed, the smash down the middle is more dangerous for them as a pair due to their forehand sides being on either side of the court. Therefore biasing her racket to the forehand side will increase this disadvantage even more. If her partner was right-handed, she would still adopt the same racket position as the area between the two players is still considered a good area to target smashes.

Lastly, a smash to the trams will take relatively longer to travel that distance, by which time, she might be able to get her racket to it. I’m not saying it will be easy. Given her position, it looks like a well-placed smash might be an outright winner. The point is she has a little more time to react to it than a smash to her body for example. So, therefore, the more immediate threats are the priority.

So the takeaway from this is to hold your racket in such a position that it gives you the greatest number of options to reply and limits potential winning shots from the opponent. This is best done by holding the racket in a neutral position. By doing so you give yourself much more of a chance to return a smash placed in almost any direction.

Feet Position

Because of the speed of the game, your feet will be moving all the time. When defending in badminton, it’s important to get your feet in the right position. There are some variations of this which are dependent on certain situations in the game. For the purposes of this article, I will define the basic feet position when receiving a smash.

We already know we are square to the net facing the direction the shuttle is coming from. So naturally, your feet will also be pointing towards where the shuttle is coming from.

However, here is the small detail you should be aware of. Your feet should not be perfectly in line with each other. Rather they should be a little staggered, with your racket leg slightly forward. This gives you the ability to move forwards and backwards quickly without the additional time to adjust your feet.

Like with every shot, you should perform a split step just as the opponent strikes the shuttle. This will allow you to push off with momentum should a drop or clear be played by the opponent. It’s these situations you will notice how important the placement of your feet is. Combining these three positions will give you the best foundation for defending in badminton doubles!

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