For the last two years, a quiet but steadily growing badminton routine among comedians has been unfolding in Mumbai. Now, that habit has turned into something bigger: a one-day comedians’ badminton tournament organised by Pavitra Shetty, featuring three teams—Drop Shots led by Kanan Gill and Shreya Priyam Roy, Smashers led by Urooj Ashfaq and Neville Bharucha and Shuttlers led by Aakash Gupta and Jeeya Sethi. Around 60 comics will be part of the action on court tomorrow, 1 April, and another 20 will participate as commentators. The roster includes Kanan Gill, Urooj Ashfaq, Aishwarya Mohanraj, Karunesh Talwar, Shamik Chakrabarti, Neville Bharucha and Aditya Gundeti among others.
Shetty has effectively been solely running logistics around the badminton group for a while now. “I usually plan all the bookings. Admin work is my job there,” she says. The idea of doing a tournament had been floating around for some time, but it only took shape after she participated in the Comedians Cricket League in Chandigarh. “I didn’t even know what to do in that game and I was having so much fun,” she says. “So I thought lets do one for badminton. There are way more women also, and I know more people who play this game.”
The tournament will be streamed online on Shetty’s YouTube channel rather than opened to a live audience. “Badminton courts don’t really have a stadium, at least in Mumbai,” Shetty explains, adding that the first edition is intentionally small because sponsorship has been a challenge. “My last three months have just been that—new sponsor, new promise, new promise broken.” The hope is that a successful first run will help expand it into a larger, multi-day tournament next year with more comics and stronger backing.
On the contrary, participation hasn’t been difficult to secure. “At least 90% of the people replied immediately,” she says. The first 60 respondents made it into the playing pool, while others are joining as commentators or backups. Some comics are travelling from outside Mumbai as well. “The thought was that these comics can come, put a show here and think of it as their Mumbai leg and figure it out.”
The structure of the tournament keeps things competitive without making it too demanding. Matches will be largely doubles with a few singles games included, and each participant is expected to appear at least once on court. Beyond that, the day includes commentary duties and vox-pop segments. As Shetty puts it, “They have to just play one match, commentate one match, feature in one-two vox pops, eat lunch buffet, evening snacks, and go home. So it’s like a party, basically.”
Teams have also been balanced deliberately by skill level. Players initially classified themselves as “hardcore,” “medium core,” or “noobs,” after which adjustments were made to ensure each team had a mix. Strategy will play a role through a scoring twist that allows captains to double—or lose—points depending on matchups. “It’s more like, as a team, how many points you’ve made,” she explains.
Despite the inevitable trash talk (“that is our only skill set” she jokes) Shetty says the sporting side of the comedy community feels noticeably collaborative. “When it comes to sports, comedians are the most positive people,” she says, recalling how others helped her learn the game when she started out. “Everyone was teaching so well.”
Her own entry into badminton was practical rather than planned. Not particularly fond of conventional exercise but open to sport, she found badminton relatively accessible compared to alternatives. “The rackets are cheaper, the shoes are cheaper, and there were more courts to book,” she says. What began as small doubles games gradually grew into a larger group that now plays regularly.
For now, the tournament remains deliberately modest in scale—three teams, one day, surprise prizes, and comics handling everything from commentary to on-ground segments. But if it works, Shetty is already thinking about what comes next. “We’re hoping this one is a successful run. So more brands will put in money next year and we can do it at a bigger scale.”
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