Badminton Indonesia – Richard Maenaky makes changes in Mixed Doubles’ squad for the SEA Games
Indonesia’s coach Richard Maenaky has made some changes in the Mixed Doubles squad of national badminton team just before the start of the 26th South-East Asian (SEA) Games, which will kick off in Jakarta, Indonesia, from Saturday, November 12.
The coach made the changes because of the poor performance of a few shuttlers for the last six months. The coach also justified the changes in the Indonesian squad which have been made at the eleventh hour as the event is just a couple of days away.
The coach replaced the World Number 11 couple of Pia Zebadiah and Fran Kurniawan with the lower ranked shuttlers, Debby Susanto and Muhammad Rijal, who are currently placed at number 21 in the Mixed Doubles world rankings. The reason was the poor performance
of Pia and Fran in the recent events which casted doubts in their success in the SEA Games.
The quivering run of the couple in the Denmark Open Premier Super Series and French Open Super Series became the major reason and forced the coach to take this step ahead of the home event. The coach knew that the continuous bad performances spared no option
for him but to replace them with a lower ranked couple.
The coach said, “I had to make the decision because Pia and Fran failed to show solid cooperation between them.”
He further added, “They started to blame each other. OK, I thought, that’s it. My job is not only to handle them; I have other pairs to focus on.”
The duo got elimination from the national squad for SEA Games on October 25 after losing the opening round matches in the Denmark Open and French Open tournaments. Since the shuttlers failed to produce good results, the coach decided to separate them.
Now, Fran will play by partnering with Shendy Puspa Irawati while, Pia is still to be paired with any shuttler. The SEA Games are just two days away and the change in the squad has given a chance to Rijal and Susanto to perform well and justify their selection
in the national team for the home event.
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