Introduction to the Thomas Cup Badminton Tournament

dd yy September 6, 2024 7 0

The Thomas Cup is the World Men’s Badminton Team Championships, organised by the BWF.

The Thomas Cup is 28cm high, 16cm wide including the handle, and consists of three parts: the base, the cup and the lid, with a model of a player at the top of the lid. The front of the cup is engraved with the words: “The International Badminton Champion’s Challenge Cup organised by the International Badminton Federation presented by George Thomas Barth in 1939”. The cup is said to have been cast in London in white gold and was worth £50,000 at the time.

Toms, whose full name was George Toms, was a famous British badminton player who won the British Badminton Championships several times. He was the men’s singles champion at the All England Badminton Championships four times in a row, the men’s doubles champion nine times, and the mixed doubles champion six times. He began winning titles at the age of 21 and was a champion every year, the last time he won a title he was 41 years old.When the BWF was formed in July 1934, he was elected as the first President.

When the IWF was founded in 1934, the Englishman Thomas was elected President, and five years later, at a meeting of the IWF, Thomas suggested that the time was ripe to organise a world men’s team competition, and offered to donate a trophy for the event, to be called the “Thomas Cup”.

This proposal was endorsed by the Congress, but due to the outbreak of the Second World War, the Cup, which was to be held around 1941, was delayed. After the end of the Second World War, the IWF finally organised the first Thomas Cup in Scotland between 1948 and 1949, and Malaysia became the first country to have its name engraved on the Cup.

From 1982 onwards, the tournament was held every two years, and the format was changed from 5 out of 9 matches (5 singles and 4 doubles) over two days to 3 out of 5 matches (3 singles and 2 doubles) over one day. By 1998, 20 editions of the Cup had been held, and the championships had been played between Indonesia, Malaysia and China in Asia.