Badminton: Malaysia’s lack of young stars cruelly exposed at worlds and need fixing

PETALING JAYA: Other countries keep churning young champions but where are Malaysia’s future badminton singles stars?

In the recent World Championships in Copenhagen, Denmark, the men’s singles final saw the hot battle between two 22-year-old Kunlavut Vitidsarn of Thailand and Kodai Naraoka of Japan with the former emerging as the first from his country to win a men’s singles title.

A Thai and a Singaporean (Loh Kean Yew), both our neighbours from north and south, have won the world singles title for the first time but we are still scrapping the barrel.

In just one and the half years, Naraoka has shown that he is the worthy replacement for their two-time champion Kento Momota, who has never really reached the same height he was since the car crash in Malaysia.

Malaysia have Lee Zii Jia, Ng Tze Yong and Justin Hoh but all of them are at different stages of maturity in their game.

The 24-year-old Zii Jia has been dealing with all kind of issues since winning the All-England in 2021; the 23-year-old Tze Yong is still buying time to be more consistent while an injured Justin is slowly making a comeback to make up for lost time. It’s worse in the women’s singles as the gulf in standard is so huge that it will be quite impossible to find someone like South Korean An Se-young.

The 22-year-old Se-young won her country’s first gold at the world meet, which was her ninth title this year, to show her envious rivals how high she has set the benchmark as far as the competition in the women’s singles is concerned.

In fact, the cool and effortless way she overpowered three-time champion Carolina Marin of Spain in the final speaks volume of her dominance.

Here in Malaysia, either in men or women’s singles, we do not see even one star a class above the rest and there are not many at the lower level – either these youngsters don’t get a chance to play or their quality is just not good enough.

Malaysia’s singles are still left behind while others are moving ahead.

Instead of strengthening the grassroots programme and improving the national set-up, Malaysia continue to lose coaches after coaches and there have been changes after changes.

Either coaches leave or coaches are moved from one department to another – hardly having time to work on their players. Or at times, players are moved and placed under different coaches or department and they hardly have time to settle down.

What Malaysian badminton need right now is stability.

Until the system is stable and solid, sadly, our players will continue to struggle and deal with inconsistency.

Credit, however, must be given to the doubles players – the men, women and mixed – for taking turns to deliver the goods.

Despite all the pressure to perform, the 2022 world champions Aaron Chia-Soh Wooi Yik stood tall to deliver a bronze in Copenhagen. Youngsters Man Wei Chong-Tee Kai Wun have the potential to go far while Ong Yew Sin-Teo Ee Yi can be dangerous if not for injuries.

Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah may have missed out on a golden chance to become the first women medallist in the worlds but they have always given their best.

The Asian Games is next in Hangzhou, China, in less than a month and the Malaysian players need to make huge sacrifices and go the extra mile if they harbour hope to outdo players from China, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, India, Thailand and Taiwan.