Mul­ti­ple times bad­minton queen Nekeisha Blake will re­turn to the courts this week for the Se­nior Bad­minton Rank­ings Tour­na­ment which is sched­uled to take place from to­day (Mon­day to Fri­day) at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre (NRC) in Tacarigua.

Ac­tion will be­gin at 6 pm and run un­til 9 pm.

The tour­na­ment will be played in a round-robin for­mat which will even­tu­al­ly put Blake on a col­li­sion course with Cheque­da De­doulet, the ris­ing bad­minton ace who is tar­get­ing a spot in the Olympic Games in Paris, France in 2024.

De­boulet told Guardian Me­dia Sports re­cent­ly that she needs more in­ter­na­tion­al train­ing and tour­na­ments to com­pete in if she is to earn a berth at the Olympics. Due to scarce fi­nan­cial re­sources, she has been care­ful­ly se­lect­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al events that she will com­pete in this year, as she tries to max­imise her in­put with what she gets back.

Need­ing to be among the top 100 play­ers on the world rank­ings to po­ten­tial­ly qual­i­fy for the Olympics, De­boulet has moved from close to 1000th ranked to 275th in the world last year alone. And from this rank­ings tour­na­ment, she could in­crease her chances at play­ing at top in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions, as the top-ranked play­ers will be cho­sen to rep­re­sent the coun­try at fu­ture in­ter­na­tion­al cham­pi­onships.

The last time De­boulet and Blake met was back in 2019 at the semi­fi­nals of the Se­nior Na­tion­al Bad­minton Cham­pi­onships which De­boulet won 21-16, 21-19 to book a place in the fi­nal.

Blake will be just one of many top lo­cal play­ers she will have to con­tend with, of­fi­cials have said, but there will be many.

Mean­while, the men’s play-off is al­so ex­pect­ed to fea­ture some top play­ers, such as Travis Sinanan, Leon Cassie, and broth­ers Nicholas and Nathaniel Khelawan, among oth­ers.

Mean­while, the Ju­nior Bad­minton Rank­ings Tour­na­ment con­tin­ued at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre yes­ter­day with ac­tion in the boys and girls un­der-15, 17 and 19.