Monday, February 22, 2016

Malaysia might not qualify for Thomas Cup

For the 1st time in history, Malaysia didn't qualify for Thomas Cup on merit. With 4 slot for grab, Malaysia lost in the quarterfinals and lost it's chance to qualify on merit.

The semifinalist and automatic qualifiers were Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and India.

Japan and China has already by virtue of Defending Champion and host. This means, there's another slot for grab between loosing quarter-finalist. Apart from Malaysia, the others whom are still in contention are Taiwan, Thailand & Hong Kong. In addition to the 1 Asian slot, there are also 3 slots which is open to teams from any continent.

Thus Malaysian team officials are confident of qualifying to the Finals by virtue of the ranking. This will be based on March 1 ranking.

Of course, Malaysia were without Lee Chong Wei, Chong Wei Feng, Koo-Tan and Gon-Tan due to Olympics training schedule.

China also did the same as they rested Lin Dan, Chen Long and few other big guns. But they can afford to do it as they already qualified for the finals but not for Malaysia. Based on the paper we should be able to qualify (through back door) but it could change in few weeks time, should our players fail to perform well at the international opens.

To make it worse, we lost to minnows India by 3-2, couldn't get clean sheet against Sri Lanka, where we forgo 1 game. We can be proud that we sent a bunch of young players/back up team, but this will be the players whom will be in main squad in 2 years.

Every team had their transition i.e Indonesia, South Korea, China. But they were able to qualify on merit.

Norza Zakaria, said they targeted to match the previous performance by qualifying for finals, but the question is, can they even qualify for the finals?

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