Pro Badminton League matches to be 15-point contests

Pro Badminton League (PBL) 2016 matches, to be held between January 2 to 17 will be shortened affairs with each being played up to 15 points in order to make them faster and more exciting, the organisers announced on Tuesday.

Among others rules and formats, the matches -- each tie to have two men's singles fixtures, and a women's singles, men's doubles and mixed doubles each -- will witness a sudden-death point to determine the contest at 14-all.

International badminton matches are determined on 21 points.

Moreover, each team will get to strategically select one of the five matches that they play in a tie as their "trump match" where a victory gives the team a bonus point and a loss gives it a negative point. A team cannot put the same player in the "trump matches" proposed by them more than twice in the league stage and once in the knock out stage.

Apart from this, each team shall have a minimum and maximum of 10 players of which a minimum of four Indian players, and shall ensure that at least two matches out of five in a tie shall have Indian participation. No player can play more than two matches in a tie.

"The idea behind introducing the new rules is to make the League more competitive. The new format will keep each team on the edge as each day will produce a new result and might put different teams on a better position vis-a-vis the positions that they were a day earlier," Badminton Association of India (BAI) president and PBL chairman Akhilesh Das Gupta said in a release.

"So no team can take any day lightly as one wrong move will prove tables changing for them."