The COVID-19 pandemic has brought all the sporting activities to a standstill and badminton matches are no exception. Nevertheless, to train the badminton players in this situation, Sports Authority of India (SAI) and Badminton Association of India (BAI) organised online training sessions across India on video-calling app Zoom. However, during the course of the session, pornographic images suddenly appeared on the screens of over 700 coaches which left everyone red-faced. Though, the source of those pictures hasn’t come out. However, this episode has certainly raised a lot of fingers over the conducting of these online practice sessions. Priority Is Health, We Can Talk Sports Later, Says National Badminton Coach Pullela Gopichand.

The online programme was led by none other than India badminton coach Pullela Gopichand and foreign coaches Agus Dwi Santoso and Namrih Suroto. The sessions were scheduled to take place five days per week for three weeks with 39 different topics being planned to cover in the entire course.

According to reports, Gopichand immediately left the session as soon as the images started to appear while the Indonesian coach Santoso was the resource person when the images first appeared.

"Santoso, the new Indonesian coach, was the resource person when pictures started appearing on the screen. There was a momentary gap and then the images resurfaced. This happened a number of times," a participant told Times of India.

While another coach, who was in that live session, said that there were several women present in the sessions. Thus, precautions should be taken before conducting of these sort of programmes. "When you are conducting a programme on such a large scale you should take precautions. There were several women coaches, parents and some children in the programme, though it is meant only for coaches," he said to TOI.

Even some coaches went on to say that videoconferencing app Zoom should not have been used to conduct these training sessions. However, SAI clarified that there was no hacking involved in the session and the infamous episode occurred due to 'sudden technical malfunction.'

"The Sports Authority of India, in association with national sporting federations, is hosting online knowledge development workshop for coaches in 16 disciplines. So far all sessions have functioned smoothly, with 500-700 coaches from across the country participating in the workshops per session,” said SAI in a statement.

SAI also added that the organization’s IT department is investigating behind the source of those images. However, they made it clear that the live training session wasn’t hacked.

In one such online workshop which was being held for badminton coaches on Thursday afternoon, there was a sudden technical malfunction leading to some unwanted material popping up on the screen. The session was being conducted by a senior coach of the Badminton Association of India, who also had the online technical control of the session. SAI's IT department is investigating the issue in detail. However it is clear that the Zoom session was not hacked," the statement further said.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 24, 2020 08:28 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).