2004 & 2006 Thomas & Uber Cup Team Championships Info. by Lesley Allinson (IBF) The Finals of the 2004 Thomas and Uber Cups Team Championships will be held in Jakarta, Indonesia in May 2004. The exact dates will be announced in the near future. 12 teams will contest the final stage of each competition as follows: Thomas Cup Africa - 1 team Asia - 6 teams (host & holder Indonesia + 5 others) Europe - 3 teams Oceania - 1 team Pan America - 1 team Uber Cup Africa - 1 team Asia - 6 teams (host Indonesia, holder China + 4 others) Europe - 3 teams Oceania - 1 team Pan America - 1 team Each Continental Confederation will organise a Continental tournament restricted to its own members and will communicate to the IBF by Monday 23 February 2004 a list of teams in ranking order. The list has to include one more team (as a reserve team) than the number of places allocated. Copies of the new regulations were sent to the IBF member associations and the continental confederations. The Finals of the 2006 Thomas and Uber Cups Team Championships will be held in Tokyo, Japan. The International Badminton Federation is working to determine the process to be used for allocating places at the 2006 finals. (Lesley Allinson is the IBF Events Officer.)
The new version of TC/UC seems quite good to me! I had a quick look and saw that all 12 teams will be playing in the final draw : * four winners of their pool will be directly in quarter final * the eight other teams will play a preliminary round (second against third), with the winner joining a "pool winner" in quarter finals.
Here's the exact system : 12 teams are placed in four groups of three. At the end of the group games, we get a ranking : Group A : A1,A2,A3 Group B : B1,B2,B3 Group C : C1,C2,C3 Group D : D1,D2,D3 Then there is a final "knockout" draw : A1 bye C3 vs D2 B1 bye C2 vs D3 A2 vs B3 C1 bye A3 vs B2 D1 bye
It looks like the winners of each group will get an extra days rest which will increase the incentive to come out top in the group. And then with the extra round of matches, it less possible to predict which opponent the winners will play. A quarter final round increases the number of players that can exposed to matches as well. Can expect more rotation of players to ensure adequate rest for each player. All-in-all, this looks like a welcome change and sure to increase the tactical variations in team planning.
This subject has already been brought up in this thread in fact... Though there weren't many reactions...
Thomas Cup Group Draw It will be interesting to find out how the IBF is going to allocate the 12 teams to the 4 Groups in the final stages in Jakarta. As most will agree, the Asian giants comprising China, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea and Denmark in Europe are streets ahead of the other teams from the other continents. It will be unfair to put all of them in one basket though I think this will not happen. It makes sense for these strong badminton countries to head each group, but since there are only 4 groups, one of them will be in the same group. Chances are, these same countries will top the group and get a bye in the Quarter Finals. According to an earlier post here, "Each Continental Confederation will organize a Continental tournament ... (and submit) a list of teams in ranking order" to the IBF. To me, this seems to be too tedious and time consuming for the Asian continent as we know their strengths from international tournaments and past records. If the IBF is going to sort out the groupings according to this continental ranking list and placing them in the various separate groups, then the 4 strong Asian countries I mentioned will benefit as they will be well spread out. But Denmark will have the harder task of meeting one of them, not that Denmark cannot prevail, depending on who they will face eventually. So the final groupings will be an interesting outcome and one which the IBF should consider very carefully.
Team Ranking I think 12 teams in the finals should be ranked advance as follows: For each association represented on the Individual World Ranking list, the 3 highest ranked singles players and 2 highest ranked doubles players are considered. A full round-robin between all such teams is then "simulated" by the computer, using the Thomas Cup system, and with the players listed in ranking order in each team. The result of this complete round-robin simulation provides the final Ranking order of the teams. For the seeding list for the 2004 Thomas & Uber Cups Finals only players eligible to represent their association will be taken into consideration. The May 1st 2004 Ranking list will be used to produce the seeding list. We should remember what had happened in Sudirman Cup 2003.
Re: Team Ranking If possible, I would suggest to use 5 MS and 3 MD to determine the ranking to better reflect the "team value". TC is a team event, and "backup" (still might be top 10 players in power houses, as for CHN) could bring huge impact on the final result. Therefore, better match ups and injuries could really effect the ranking.
