History

Sports played with a shuttlecock and racquets probably developed in ancient Greece around 2000 years ago, but are also mentioned in India and China.

An early ancestor of the game may have been the Chinese game of jianzi which involves using a shuttlecock but no racquet. The object of the game was to keep the shuttlecock from touching the ground as long as possible without using the hands.

In England, a children's game called Battledores and Shuttlecocks was popular in the medieval times. Children would use paddles (Battledores) and work together to keep the Shuttlecock up in the air and prevent it from reaching the ground.

The British took the game to Japan, China and Siam as they colonised Asia, and it soon became a children's game there.

The competitive sport of badminton was invented by British Army officers in Pune, India in the 19th century when they added a net and played it competitively. As the city of Pune was formerly known as Poona, the game was also known as Poona at that time.

Soldiers brought the adapted game back to England in the 1850s. The sport then received its current name in 1860 in a pamphlet by Isaac Spratt, a London toy dealer, entitled "Badminton Battledore - a new game". This described the game as played at Badminton House, the Duke of Beaufort's estate in Gloucestershire, England.

The first official set of rules was written by the Bath Badminton Club in 1877. The Badminton Association of England was formed in 1893 and the first international championship took place in 1899 with the All England Championships.

Badminton became a popular sport in the world, primarily in East and Southeast Asia, which currently dominates the sport, and in the Scandinavian countries.

The International Badminton Federation (IBF) was established in 1934 and had England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Denmark, Holland, Canada, New Zealand and France as its founding members. India joined as an affiliate in 1936.

It became a Summer Olympic sport at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.