Bao Yixin/Li Junhui is a very interesting new partnership. They could be very good together.
But why is Zhang Nan left out of the XD? Surely he could partner with anybody.
Zhang Nan/Liu Cheng is also an interesting new partnership.
Zhang Nan has said he still wants to do double duty in MD and XD. His partnership with Liu Cheng should be very promising as Liu Cheng is also showing good potential with the gifted youngster Zheng Siwei.
I think CBA wants to try out ZN with LC first as the latter is more experienced than the young up-and-comer ZSW. They could be thinking that a sufficiently experienced partner to replace Fu Haifeng is preferable in order to take on the best in the world while waiting for ZSW to gain in experience over time. But I won't be the least bit surprised if they later try out ZN with ZSW esp if LC doesn't match up very well.
I too think highly of the Bao Yixin/Li Junhui combination as BYX/Liu Cheng partnership has been tried out and wasn't really top-notch. That doesn't mean Liu Cheng won't make a very good XD partner, it's just that CBA wants to reshuffle them about to find the best mix.
Probably, Zhang Nan is also waiting for the right partner in XD and for a start he's trying a new MD partner first, and the XD lady partner will come later I think so as not to overstretch him immediately. I believe Zhang Nan's XD partnership, whoever she is, will soon be fighting for top honours with Zheng Siwei/Chen Qingchen and also Li Junhui/Bao Yixin, my gut feeling.
Li Junhui impresses me a lot as a doubles player lately, his pairing with Liu Yuchen in MD is already making waves, two SS finals in two weeks and winning one of them is nothing short of spectacular, the more so when you consider how they, still relatively young, fared against the top guns in the rest of the world.
