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[ Robertson ] [ Kellogg ] [ Clark ] [ Cann ] [ Ouseph ]
Cann aims for equal pot
by Richard Eaton
 Elizabeth
Cann hopes to create a record which will never be broken by
becoming English national women's singles champion again over
the next three days.
If she does, it will gain her more than her fourth title; she
will become the first woman ever to gain the same first prize as
the men's winner.
This piece of history has taken 45 years to come about, and Cann,
who does not always find it easy to make ends meet from
badminton earnings, is pretty pleased.
“I can't gripe that the prize money's not been equal in the past
- it's better later than never,” she said. “It's better that it
happens while I'm still playing rather than afterwards”
Cann, or whoever wins the title, will take home £1,200, which is
50 percent more than last year's first prize, an increase said
to have been made possible by the arrival of a new partner for
the English national championships, Imperial Consultants,
a special building validation company.
Still it has been a long time coming and Cann was asked why she
thought it had not happened before. “I don't know. That's the
way it's always been. For things to change I always takes so
long for discussion and for people to agree on it,” she replied.
 “It's
always been 'why change?' It's not till certain types of people
put their fist down that a change actually happens.”
Can she make a decent living these days? “I don't call it a
decent, but it could be if I was higher in the world ranking,”
she said, turning a negative into a potential positive. “It's
possible. With the ranking I have at the moment, although I
don't make a lot, I do make a living.”
At the age of 29 she needs to be motivated by something more
than the cash, essential though that is. “If it was that high a
priority, I probably wouldn't be bothering,” she says.
“I play because I love what I am doing. But I have put a lot of
time and effort into it, and I have to live and pay for things.
So it's still a priority.”
Cann will be challenged for the four-figure sum by Jill
Pittard, the remarkable part-timer from Coventry who somehow
combines a career as a calibration engineer with international
badminton by embarking on a to-ing and fro-ing daily schedule
which would send most people into a spin.
The second-seeded Pittard has three times been runner-up, but
before the two can meet again, Cann may have a potentially
difficult second-round test against Rachel Howard,
another England international, and could have a semi-final with
Sarah Walker, the 19-year-old former member of England's
European title winning squad.
Pittard should have a semi-final with Helen Davies, who
made a winning England debut against Poland recently. But, like
Cann, she may need to be wary of an earlier hurdle, a possible
quarter-final with the promising 16-year-old, Panuga Riou.
Nevertheless, now that Commonwealth champion Tracey Hallam has
retired, Cann is a clearer favourite than before. That's also
partly because she is making some progress towards justifying
the belief of those at Badminton England who claim she can be
late developer.
Late last year Cann scored a fine win over Yao Jie, the former
European champion from The Netherlands, and also won the
Scottish International Championships.
“I definitely see myself as a late developer,” the Jersey-raised
player says. “I was quite old before I had a technical coach. I
had no help with techniques till I was 20. I had many bad habits
in my game, and it took so long to get rid of those.
“But because I have so much passion about it and really want to
do it – that's how it can be done. If I don't want to be better
and don't want to do work it can't be done. I have to really
want to.”
She clearly does. But the money is an important help.
[ Robertson ] [ Kellogg ] [ Clark ] [ Cann ] [ Ouseph ] |
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