Kim Her lashes out at Badminton Asia Confederation for hectic schedule
Malaysia’s national doubles head coach Tan Kim Her blows away the Badminton Asia Confederation (BAC) yesterday, for designing the hectic format for Thomas Cup preliminaries.
Despite of securing their berth in the Thomas Cup finals set to be held in Wuhan, China, the Malaysian shuttlers are scheduled to sweat hard against Indonesia today for a third place match.
Kim Her looked irritated as his players will not have a proper break to recharge their batteries for the upcoming events.
Kim said, “We have three European tournaments coming up and most of the players are going all out to earn Olympic qualifying points. Now, they have only one week to recover from this gruelling tournament.”
The Badminton Asia Confederation instead of sending the top ranked teams in the Thomas Cup finals, put four losing quarter-finalists in the playoff round to decide the fifth qualifier which means three extra matches for each team.
After exhausting encounters in the preliminaries, the teams could feel this playoff round a futile exercise as it will be a hard task to overcome three countries.
Malaysian female shuttlers have very low chances of qualifying for the Uber Cup finals but they still have to play three matches, on the other hand South Korean men’s team, despite of meeting all the standards if top ranked teams were sent to the Thomas
Cup finals, still need to surpass three contenders.
Kim Her criticised this unnecessarily extended round and raised his voice for the Koreans.
The Malaysian coach said, “I pity the South Koreans. They are certainly the highest ranked team among all the losing quarter-finalists and deserve to be in the Finals. But they have to play three extra ties just to confirm their place.”
Malaysia and Indonesia have already reserved their spots in the Thomas Cup finals so they are going to send their reserved players in today’s encounter.
Malaysia’s top shuttlers World Number one Lee Chong Wei, Koo Kien Keat and Tan Boon Heong sat on benches yesterday against Japan.
It seems they have decided to take a short break as a series of European badminton events is approaching. German Open and All England Open are set to be held in next month followed by Swiss Open.
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