Suppose in doubles match during the play if the shuttlecock is in mid air then is the player allowed to change the racket?
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1 Answer
Yes, it is legal to change the racket during play. From the Recommendation to Technical Officials (RTTO) §3.5.4.2:
(...) change of a racket at courtside during a rally is permitted.
Notice the at courtside: At a tournament, there will be two boxes per side into which the players must put all their stuff. The players are allowed to lay out a new racket on top of the box. At a lower-level tournament, these might be wash baskets, marked lines, or simply "somewhere close to the netpost".
These boxes are where players get new rackets. They may also ask a coach to fetch a racket for them and take the racket off the coach near the court.
But outside the intervals (at 11 and between games), players must stay courtside (which means on the court or at most a couple of meters from it). In other words, going to the changing room or local badminton store during a rally is not allowed.
In practice, racket changes during play happen quite regularly. For instance, here is a 16 minute compilation video.
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I'm not sure if the official rules have been changed, but the bit about having the coach fetch a new racket does not seem to be the case now, at least in some BWF tournaments. I heard Jan Ø. Jørgensen criticising this after he received a yellow card at this year’s All England for cutting the strings in his racket when they broke to avoid the racket snapping. The interviewer asked why he didn’t just ask a coach to cut the strings for him, and he replied that that would also have resulted in a yellow card because the coaches aren’t allowed to have any contact with the courtside area during play. Commented Apr 4, 2019 at 18:23
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@JanusBahsJacquet Yellow cards cannot be shown to coaches, so that's questionable in the first place. The umpire would rather involve the referee if the coach misbehaves. It is true that coaches are supposed to stay in their chairs during the match, but §4.6 of the CoC explicitly allows them to leave the court while the shuttle is not in play. The coach can simply hand the racket over on the chair, or throw it to the player.– phihagCommented Apr 4, 2019 at 22:44
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Also note that at lower levels where there's not a giant box for a large racket bag at each court, coaches putting something into the player's bag is very common.– phihagCommented Apr 4, 2019 at 22:45
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No, he was saying that Jørgensen himself would have gotten a yellow card if he’d thrown the racket to his coaches to have them cut the strings, or if the coaches had left their chair to fetch the racket from the courtside area (the ‘boxes’). I don’t know where he got it from, though, whether he asked the umpire or someone told him (potentially incorrectly), though I would say that §4.6 does confirm that fetching the racket at the courtside boxes would indeed be a punishable offence unless done at an interval. Commented Apr 4, 2019 at 22:54
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(Though that same CoC also says coaches may not coach players in any way during the game, which they constantly do with no umpire intervention at all… I suppose they make sure they’re not delaying play.) Commented Apr 4, 2019 at 22:55