I won't call them lucky. For me, that's rude. I will just say that Malaysia has done good job enough to proceed. India made a huge blunder. India team can only blame themselves.
Please do not belittle every team’s effort by saying they are lucky by winning the tie. When a team wins a match, it proves their strategy works better and their hard work pays-off. What if someone mentions here that if Malaysia fielded Tan/Lai, they could have won easily against India? Would you feel disheartened?
Amazing: the 33-year old Malkov did it again! Nishimoto yesterday, Wangcharoen today. He is currently ranked #62 in the world. According to wikipedia, his highest ranking ever is #41. And it's not like he's a specialist of cups. Prior to this Sudirman cup, his record was 2W/3L in Sudirman cups, and 2W/7L in Thomas cups, none of these wins was against (even remotely) top players. In fact, in previous cups, he lost in two straight games vs LCW (9-21, 6-21), CL, VA, CTC, Tago and young Momota; including some serious beating (LCW 9-21, 6-21; one 3-21 vs VA; one 6-21 vs Tago) What is his secret?
Why did Gopichand skip this tournament? He seems focussed on individual tournament success like WC, Olympics and WTS 500,750 and 1000 tournaments. The only team tournaments he cares about are Commonwealth games and Asian Games. Sudirman Cup and Thomas/Uber Cup appear to be training exercises. India made a double blunder in holding back their best MS and MD.(Srikanth Kidambi and Satwik Rankireddy/Chirag Shetty) Its like they put up half a team for MAS. India have a mountain to climb against formidable China. MS, WS and MD are the only possible wins on paper, if they have the intent to win. I hope they at least get 1 or 2 points.
I think you are being ignorant of the fact that I've written 50-50 too. I said 55-45 because I believe (that's my view, not a compulsion for you to believe) India had strong chance to win MS (would have been better if KS played) and WS. XD was a close affair. And H2H between Satwik/Ponappa and Goh/Lai was 2-0 in favour of the former . Had LCW, Chan/Goh, Goh/Tan been included in this team, then the odds would have been in favour of Malaysia. That's a hypothetical case.
Puavaranukroh absolutely destroyed the Russians. I feel a bit of resemblance in his playstyle to Zheng Siwei...in terms of awkward offbalance smashes that deal some serious damage.
In the end, RUS fails to qualify. But, RUS has put up a great fight against JPN and THA. Well done! This must be RUS' best achievements in SC. Come back stronger, RUS. I like the fact that more countries can challenge the top guns. No more filler countries.
I think the odds for Minion and Ahsan/Hendra to win the game still 60:40, but Fajar/Rian 50:50. I'm pretty sure The Danes will go for Kim/Rasmussen, they don't wanna take high risk. just my opinion. I think the Daddies (Ahsan/Hendra) will take this one.
Exactly why I thought they might field Fajar/Rian now as INA is pretty much safe to the QF (as long as they can win at least 2 matches). The Danes might try something unexpected with a scratch pair like they did with Boe/Conrad in Thomas Cup last year. It was a high risk move but it worked like wonders against Kam/Son. Guess we'll see tomorrow.
