Shuttlecock diplomacy called for in this badminton racquet

NEWTON'S OPTIC:MO CHARA, mo readers, welcome to my first sports column for the World of the Newssince stepping down entirely voluntarily as President of Sinn Féin.

I guess the biggest story of the week is the English team’s withdrawal from the World Badminton Championships in India due to security concerns.

From the outset, let me say that those threatening to kill the English badminton players have no mandate and no strategy.

If armed actions against English badminton players would help the Islamic fighters of Lashkar-e-Taiba to expel India from Kashmir and establish a unified caliphate across southeast Asia then I would be the first to offer them analysis.

There are times when, regrettably, it may be necessary to kill English badminton players as part of an overall process of gradual engagement towards an agreed outcome of exactly what you want.

As a world-renowned peace activist, I would be willing to facilitate talks between Lashkar-e-Taiba and Badminton England, perhaps by flying between their respective headquarters in the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the National Badminton Centre in Milton Keynes. You could call it “shuttlecock diplomacy”. Okay, that’s just my little joke. Unless you didn’t like it, in which case it was my press officer’s little joke.

However, it seems to me that this micro-dissident so-called “Army of God” is only threatening to kill English badminton players because it can.

Many of its activities are little more than racqueteering. Nobody has stepped forward to rationalise killing and I think that’s wrong, unlike killing itself, which may or may not be wrong.

It is also obvious that Lashkar-e-Taiba has no support in the wider badminton community. Of course, we all like to see the English get beaten in any sport, anywhere. But fans have moved on. Today, with international bodies ensuring fair play, we can all work towards sending the English home within the rules, even if that means playing them at their own game, although badminton was actually brought back to England from India, which gives this whole historical struggle an inevitable post-colonial dialectic. And I can’t be any clearer than that.

We all have a responsibility, especially the media, to work for reconciliation between moderate Islamists and badminton players who consider themselves “English”. I myself have a party colleague, Caitríona Ruane, who was once a professional tennis player. Tennis is just like badminton, as I shall now whimsically imply, although I might need a joke for that as well.

How about “I didn’t recognise the court”? Yes, brilliant.

So as you can see from a

barely related and unbearably twee anecdote involving myself, the subject at hand and no ensuing bloodshed, anything is possible.

I believe that Badminton America has a vital role to play in this transformative process. By some estimates, up to 30 million Americans have played badminton or had a badminton-playing ancestor, and I will be speaking to each of them personally in the back of a pub in my new role as Sinn Féin’s roving ambassador.

I may also bring this vital mission to Canada, depending upon the exchange rate and my rental car’s insurance.

But wherever the road ahead takes me, I will leave you with this thought. All legitimacy comes from the grass-roots.

And you can’t really play badminton on grass.