I have good reasons to be proud of our Thomas Cup team’s achievement, eventhough we lost. I am very sad that we lost, as it was so close but yet so far, but now let’s put things into perspective.
If we look back at our Team preparation, on paper we did not deserve to win. We do have World No. 1 Dato’ Lee Chong Wei, but we do not have the complete blend to win the Cup.
BAM put original target as Semi-Finals. But then Tengku Mahaleel being very optimistic by pushing the target to the Finals. Being realistic though, winning the Cup, he said, was not our main target.
We made a brave move in ‘experimenting’ our Doubles by using scratch pairs. A really bold move especially during a tournament as big as Thomas Cup. So again, the ‘strategy-maker’ have tried their best to come up with the most competitive team for the Cup, plus pressing on a bit of luck. Again, we cannot easily target to win when we are ‘experimenting’.
However, when the tournament started, things start to brighten up. We did very well in group stages. Our scratch pair made outstanding performances, they even defeated Korean pairs, a country that was once known as “The Doubles Expert”. We exceeded our original target to go up to semis. And now we started to aim higher to bring back the Cup after 22 years.
Things get even better following the historical 3-0 defeat of China to Japan, the country once said “unbeatable in Thomas Cup”. With Japan being 1st timers into the Finals, at this point we are now seriously aiming to win.
Now come the Finals. Dato’ Chong Wei started the engine. But our 1st doubles struggled this time, and we were shocked by our 1st singles game. Again, remember my said points above, plus Japanese 1st doubles are world-ranked No. 3. Our 2nd Doubles turned the table and made us back alive on the race. Then come Liew Daren in the Deciding Singles. I personally lost hope looking at his 1st game, but the spirit that he kicked in during 2nd game come back, was extremely remarkable. Seldom we see Malaysian player made a come back in such a manner where the pressure was so high that he is coming behind at 15-18 with the opponent only 3 points behind to secure the Cup.
So Daren dragged the Japanese into rubber game. Hopes of bringing the Cup home came back online. At this point, I saw that pressure was building up on both sides, where it was seen that both player made a lot of unforced errors. To be fair, it was a close chase of points until the Japanese slip through at Daren’s 17th point to clinch the title.
Now, after looking from A to Z of our 2014 Thomas Cup journey, did we not achieved something remarkable?
Haji Norzafry Norhalim
Malaysian in Saudi Arabia
We did. We achieved unity together. We were not separated into Malays, Chinese or Indians or any other race for that matter. We were, during that time, as Malaysians. That is the Malaysia we should all aspire to work towards to.
Yes, we have achieved something but it is not enough esp for BAM.
With the huge money spending for so many years we not even brave in begining to put target we Will be in the final.
Except for chong wei, other 2 single players were dissapointing coz as country with good reputation of badminton we expect to perform better than Japan. Chong Wei si not originally product of BAM.