Right time to develop junior world champions into world beaters at elite level – Badminton news
Malaysia’s young shuttlers returned home by swelling with pride and they clinched gold medals in two categories in the World Junior Championships, which ended in Chinese Taipei, on Sunday, November 6.
In the Boy’s Singles category, it was Zulfadli Zulkifli who defeated the favourite shuttler and defending champion Viktor Axelsen of Denmark, who was also the top seed in the event. Besides Zulfadli, the boy’s Doubles shuttlers, Teo Ee Yi and Nelson Heg
Wei Keat also delivered phenomenal performance and got the prize in the form of gold medal.
Malaysia have been producing world champions in the doubles categories on few occasions in the past but none of those shuttlers could prove their mettle in the elite shuttlers’ category at international level. Now, the young shuttlers have proved their worth
in the junior world meet and they are on the threshold of the arena of elite players.
By keeping an eye on the past, a fear is overwhelming the concerned people that these champions will also met with the same fate as they will also remain struggling in getting good results in major international tournaments.
However, the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) can claim that they are doing well at junior level and their junior programmes have started to pay back to the nation. But the BAM also know that they need to work hard to convert these shuttlers into
world class players for winning glory at international stage.
The BAM president, Nadzmi Mohd Salleh said that there were loop poles in their strategies in the past but he is confident that all these shortcomings will be fixed now. He also appreciated the junior shuttlers for winning gold medals for making their country
proud.
He said “I would like to commend the juniors for achieving Malaysia’s best ever results in the world junior championships. We hope this will motivate and push others to excel as well.”
He further added, “We are aware that our players show slower improvement than others despite their early promise. They show us that they have talent but the rate of progress is not as fast as we would hope for. We will have to look into this.”
Now, the BAM will look into the matters and will derive the plan for turning these junior world championships into world class players at elite level.
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