One of the key to the Malaysian team’s success in the tournament is the two scratched pair combinations. These scratched pair are formed mainly due to the poor forms the existing pairing have in this year’s competition coming into this year’s Thomas Cup. There’s always a huge risk when you formed scratched pairings. In this occasion, the scratched pairing we formed proven successful. The pairing of Tan Boon Heong and Hoon Thien How even managed to upset the world ranking no.1 pair in the world in the semis giving Malaysia that valuable point to send us to the final. But scratched pairing doesn’t work well everyday. In the Thomas Cup 2 years back in Wuhan(China), the scratched pairing that was formed to face Denmark did backfire us and we lost badly in both doubles matches in that occasion.
After the Thomas Cup, Malaysia is actually making some experimental changes to its doubles pairing. Tan Boon Heong, possibly the best doubles player we have is partnering with three different partners in three Superseries events in June. He was left without a partner after his original partner-Koo Kien Keat left the national team early in the year. I personally could not quite understand the decision of experimenting partnership considering there’s a lot of major competitions like the Thomas Cup, Commonwealth Games, World Championships, and Asian Games happening this year. If things were not working well in the existing Koo-Tan partnership, the coaches should have make the decisive decision to split them up earlier, sometime after the 2012 Olympics or 2013 World Championships.
From media reports, it looks like the coaches does not get to decide whether this partnership remains but rather the leadership of the badminton association who doesn’t know how to hold a racket that makes the decision. Regularly switching doubles partners is not going to help in the future. It’s also a sign of lack in confidence. We need permanent partnerships that can win titles. Partnerships that allows us to make another assault in the next Thomas Cup. The solution to that is to allow coaches which knows their players well should be given more authority to make decisive and smart decision on partnerships. Certainly, the performance of V Shem and Wee Kiong gives local badminton fans some hope of seeing a strong doubles partnership that we have been searching since the breakthrough year of Koo and Tan.
In the singles department, the same old question is being asked over and over again: Who’s the next Lee Chong Wei? Although Chong Wei Feng has a terrific performance in this tournament, he’s still nowhere close to Chong Wei’s capability. He has yet to win an international tournament singles title. The singles department is not strong enough. Wei Feng might have step up to be the second singles player for the country. We need a stronger pool of singles players behind the scenes that are capable enough to step up to the big stages when they are needed. 10 years back when Indra Gunawan was the men singles coach, we have a few singles players that are capable of challenging regular tournament titles. The likes of Choong Hann, Roslin Hashim, Hafiz Hashim (Part of the 2002 Thomas Cup team) all capable of challenging for international titles. Since the retirement of these players, we have only Lee Chong Wei contesting for titles.
The current batch of junior players are not the best we had over the past few years. The results of the junior tournaments certainly proved it and definitely a worrying sign. We haven’t won any medals in the last two edition of the World Junior Championships and the last time we won a gold medal in the championship was in 2011. Malaysia has also constantly produces World Junior Champions over the years. But most of them failed to transform themselves from the junior level to the senior level. It’s unfair to point the fingers to whoever is responsible for this, whether it’s the players or coaches, but there’s definitely some problems in the national set-up that leads to these problems we are facing.
In the women’s camp, we too have the weakest women squad in our history and that’s a fact. However, same as the men’s squad, they put up a brave and courageous showing this time and nearly made past the group stages. Malaysia is not traditionally strong in the women’s category, but we had female players that are capable of making a mark in international scenes. Of course, we all remember singles player Wong Mew Choo and doubles pairing Wong Pei Tty-Chin Ee Hui for achieving their breakthrough in winning titles and were able to give players from top nations like China, Korea, Denmark, and Japan stiff competitions in their respective categories. Sadly, it’s not the case for the group of women’s players we had today. With the young average of this women’s Uber Cup team, let’s us hope they are able to keep working hard to emulate the success their seniors had in the past.
We can celebrate on our achievement of exceeding our semi-final target we set for this Thomas Cup. But let’s not get carried away. It still doesn’t hide the fact that we need lots of changes to make our country stronger in the sports of badminton. A runner-up showing in Thomas Cup doesn’t prove the fact that we are heading in the right direction. It’s rather a timely confidence and morale boost for the players and coaches that we are able to bring back the glory days we used to have.
By,
Zhe Xu
May 26th 2014
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