Singles shuttlers again fall flat despite Chong Wei’s win

Tuesday June 20, 2006
By RAJES PAUL
KUCHING: Apart from Lee Chong Wei's heroics at the Malaysia Open, the other men's singles shuttlers in the national team failed to live up to expectations in Sarawak.
Chong Wei's strong show was the only high point from the men's singles players when he won his third consecutive title in great fashion on Sunday.

TSUEN SENG: Failed to produce resultsThe second seed Chong Wei dug himself out of trouble to upset world number one Lin Dan of China 21-18, 18-21, 23-21 in the final at the Perpaduan Stadium.
But the performances of the other singles players were a huge letdown.
Kuan Beng Hong's misery in international tournaments continued when he failed to get past Germany's second best player Roman Spitko in the second round.
Lee Tsuen Seng, K. Yogendran and James Chua again showed that they are merely making up the numbers with early round defeats.
Yeoh Kay Bin, a back-up player, has showed a slight improvement since coming under the charge of Chinese coach Li Mao but he too failed to make an impact in Kuching.
Nusa Mahsuri's Roslin Hashim and former international Sairul Amar Ayob however, continued to perform better than these back-up players.
Roslin went down fighting to China's Lin Dan in the semi-finals and it showed that the veteran still has the fire to improve while Sairul posed problems for the higher-ranked opponents.
National chief coach Yap Kim Hock said that he was getting tired of giving some of the players in the national team the chance to prove themselves.
“This is the final straw. We are making changes in the singles set-up end of this year after the World Championships (Sept 18-24 in Madrid) and the Asian Games (Dec 1-15 in Doha). Some players will have to go,” said Kim Hock.
“Tsuen Seng especially has been given countless opportunities to prove himself and yet, he has failed to produce the results.”
Kim Hock said that the plan was to promote two players from Rashid Sidek's Project 2010-12 after the Malaysian Games (Sukma) in Kedah recently to the national team but it did not fall through.
“Li Mao was unable to pick the best two. The standard of the juniors are about the same and he could not decide. He will make his pick at the end of this year,” said Kim Hock.
Rashid's charges also took part in the Malaysian Open. Except for Beryno Wong, who put up a fight against Lin Dan, the others showed that they were still not ready for the big league.
The next assignment for the Malaysians is the Taiwan Open starting tomorrow.