I removed this unsubstantiated claim from the History section:
- It is now the second most popular sport in the world behind Soccer.
I find this hard to believe, especially since good stats on such things are hard to come by. [1] tries to settle the debate, and concludes that badminton is in fact 6th, not 2nd - but then it also unearthed the fact that 1 in 6 of the world's population play volleyball. Hmm.
If someone has some hard facts, free free to add them in, but I don't believe the 200 million figure for badminton quoted on that page either. sjorford 09:08, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- It does make sense. This sport is very popular in China and Indonesia, 2 of the 4 most populous countries in the world.--Nitsansh 00:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
I came across a couple of 1850s punch cartoons (54 and 59) implying Badminton was already popular enough then to be a nuisance on the Streets of London so I query if if really only arrived in the UK in the 1850s. Any basis for this--BozMo|talk 22:49, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- The cartoon shows the game of battledore and shuttlecock which goes back to medieval times and out of which Badminton evolved. A nice picture though and I wonder if its now out of copyright so it could be used to illustrate the article . Lumos3 13:28, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- Sure seems out of copyright but I think out of courtesy, also as it is the only attribution to author and date, and also as most of the work in these old things is scanning and cleaning the pictures you should link to the site it was lifted it off which was John Leech Archive which I will do.
I found a great picture of a jump smash which I would like to add but I'm really new here and the image copyright policy is so detailed... I think I can manage it. Need to e-mail the author of the picture. Qazx 9:25, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
I am going to edit to illustrate badminton as a sort of mixture of tennis and volleyball. While much of play is similar to tennis (singles and doubles) the feature of the 'ball' not being allowed to hit the playing surface is in common with volleyball. All three have similar court proportions and the feature of a net.
Photograph
This page needs a good action photograph or an animated gif to illistrate the game . See Table tennis to see what can be done. Lumos3 14:04, 9 November 2005 (UTC)