Sudirman Cup - What chance do we have?

[Lewisio]

The Sudirman cup squads have been announced and now an announcement has been made that Archer has pulled out.
The England squad (which leaves for Beijing on May 6) is: Men: Robert Blair, Anthony Clark, Aamir Ghaffar, Nicholas Kidd, David Lindley, Nathan Robertson, Kristian Roebuck,
Women: Elizabeth Cann, Gail Emms, Tracey Hallam, Donna Kellogg, Natalie Munt, Ella Tripp, Joanne Wright

Our only serious target is that when we finish bottom of our group, we've got to beat Sweden and can we do this every time. Sweden's top 2 ranked mens singles players are both tied at no.70 in the world - whereas our top man Andrew Smith is now no.22.

Smith lost to Croona in 2000
Kidd has played Croona and lostin 2002
Wengberg (ranked #104ish) beat Ghaffar n 2002 and 2005 at the Swedish international

Fortunately Hallam has a 3-1 winning record over their highest ranked woman - Persson

Whats everyones thoughts on the Sudirman Cup? and our chance of any success/glory?

[hkv]

The Sudirman cup squads have been announced and now an announcement has been made that Archer has pulled out.
The England squad (which leaves for Beijing on May 6) is: Men: Robert Blair, Anthony Clark, Aamir Ghaffar, Nicholas Kidd, David Lindley, Nathan Robertson, Kristian Roebuck,
Women: Elizabeth Cann, Gail Emms, Tracey Hallam, Donna Kellogg, Natalie Munt, Ella Tripp, Joanne Wright

Our only serious target is that when we finish bottom of our group, we've got to beat Sweden and can we do this every time. Sweden's top 2 ranked mens singles players are both tied at no.70 in the world - whereas our top man Andrew Smith is now no.22.

Smith lost to Croona in 2000
Kidd has played Croona and lostin 2002
Wengberg (ranked #104ish) beat Ghaffar n 2002 and 2005 at the Swedish international

Fortunately Hallam has a 3-1 winning record over their highest ranked woman - Persson

Whats everyones thoughts on the Sudirman Cup? and our chance of any success/glory?
Why do u mention Andrew Smith as your top ranked player, when u start off saying hes not even selcted for the squad??
Anyway, england will beat sweden easily if your players can play at their normal standard.. if so, u will definetly win all of the doubles and most likely the ladies singles as well... the mens singles is an open encounter, with sweden having a little advantage.

China and Korea (with kim dong moon and ra kyung min back) are the only countries i see as possible winners. Denmark must be a serious outsider, but i think we will have a hard time beating china, as we stand NO CHANCE at all in ladies singles and ladies doubles...

[chenhong]

ENGLANDS CHANCES????

none really, of doing any good, we can just hope to stay up there.

[Badboy]

Its true, i would expect to see us finish above sweden and perhaps above thailand but thats as high as we can realisitically aim for.
Our mixed pair should beat the swedes, the thais and the danes but should lose to the koreans due to them being legends. Mens doubles seems to do alright against the top pairs but always lose to the not os good pair's, robertson n blair were the pair closest to beating cai and fu at the all england.
Womens doubles are fairly reliable until it comes to the higher asian pairs but they normally put up a decent fight there as well.
Womens singles, this is awkward in that Liz cann won the nationals and the elite's this season but Trace still has more international pedigree. On her day, trace can give anyone a run for their money (after shes lost the first set to 1 or 0) and so she has a good chance of taking all of the singles as korea's strongest singles player is out, tine rassmussen hasnt quite stepped up to replace camilla yet and Trace should beat the swede. The thai player ponsana however could be a potential banana skin as i think she is a better player then her ranking suggests.
Then for mens singles we have several options in ghaffar and kidd, but englands mens singles record internationally has something left to be desired, and really the only game they should win would be the swede. They would get beat easy by gade/boonsak or lee hyun/shon.
Realistically, if our doubles players perform and we sneak a singles here or there, we should come 3rd in the group above thailand, but it wont be easy oh no.

As for winners well, its between china, indonesia and korea for me as china will win all the womens events against anyone but the indo's have men that are more then capable of competing with the chinese men in taufik (if hes up for it) and alvun/lulluk and candra/sigit should be able to beat cai and fu if not run them veyr close. Although the koreans do have their mixed pairing of ra and kim back i dont think their mens singles will be strong enough nor perhaps their mens doubles, depending on if kim plays with ha they might be a little too rusty, while lee jae jin and his partner havent quite finished maturing but they are well on their way. I dont feel that denmark however will compete for the title as they will lose the womens events to the chinese and probably koreans and their men are very unreliable. Gade has been headhunted by the chinese for years and taufik has got his number as well, johnasson doesnt quite have the game to really trouble the very top players either and they are missing that third world class player they used to have in peter rasmussen. The doubles pairs are good, but are liable to lose to any of the other top pairs and their mixed pairing of erikkson and mette is quite random in their performances, and even after their good runs at the ae and other tournaments i do slightly doubt the potential of the laybourn/kamilla partnership as a truely world class one.

[Martin Dew-Hattens]

World rankings show Smith at place 22,Ghaffar at 32 and Kidd at 34 so it does seem strange that Smith is higher ranked than the other singles players and yet does not get into the squad. Was he available for selection or is there some sinister conspiracy at work here?

If Smith did play he would have to play first singles being the highest ranked player.

[hkv]

johnasson doesnt quite have the game to really trouble the very top players @badboy
Jonassen has beaten 6 of the top 10 ranked players in the world (Jonassen is ranked 2), and beaten everyone from 9-20. Only Lin Dan, Taufik and Bao Chunlai is still unbeaten by Kenneth J, even though he has taken them to three sets.
So i think its a bit harsh to say he doesnt have the game to trouble ther very best...

Our mixed pair should beat the swedes, the thais and the danes but should lose to the koreans due to them being legends. @badboy
I dont agree on your mixed should beat the danes. I think the chances are 50/50. Eriksen/Schjoldager won their last meeting (The Masters some weeks ago) so they are holding the psycological edge. Last time Emms/Robertson won was at the EC, where they won 17-16 17-14. So it seems like an evenly contested match, dont u think??


If China isnt going to win, it must be because they lose the mixed, mens doubles and mens singles in a match. They will win the ladies doubles and ladies singles every time, if not it will be a huge surprise.
Thats why i dont see Indonesia's chances of glory. I dont think its realistic for them to win both the mixed, Natsir/Widianto vs Zhang Jun/Gao Ling, mens singles, Lin Dan vs Taufik and the mens doubles Luluk/Alven or Wijaya/Budiarto vs Cai/Fu...


Maybe if Korea, Denmark or Indonesia wins the mixed and the mens doubles it will put some pressure on Lin Dan before the mens singles, and as we saw at the olympics he doesnt always cope with pressure... But for this scenario to happen, the mens singles has to be played as the last game...

Im not sure i believe in this, but i certainly hope it will happen, as im not very keen to see china win all the gold :)

[Badboy]

@badboy
Jonassen has beaten 6 of the top 10 ranked players in the world (Jonassen is ranked 2), and beaten everyone from 9-20. Only Lin Dan, Taufik and Bao Chunlai is still unbeaten by Kenneth J, even though he has taken them to three sets.
So i think its a bit harsh to say he doesnt have the game to trouble ther very best...


Hmm true, i didnt think he had done quite that well, but i couldnt see him beating for example, any of the top 3 chinese (especially with bao afer his blood from the thomas cup) nor taufik. A match with ponsana could be close but i would imagine johnasson would have the edge, but i guess it was quite a harsh evaluation cuased by my short sightedness. It is quite usefull that several of the players you cant see him beating do all play for the same few countries though, and the malasians wont even be there to contest it.



I dont agree on your mixed should beat the danes. I think the chances are 50/50. Eriksen/Schjoldager won their last meeting (The Masters some weeks ago) so they are holding the psycological edge. Last time Emms/Robertson won was at the EC, where they won 17-16 17-14. So it seems like an evenly contested match, dont u think??


On paper it seems quite even i spose but on recent performances gail and nathan are performing well, and quite consistant if they do occasionally drop a slightly arrogant sounding comment here and there, where as the danes lost their national champs to laybourn and kamilla, lost to them again in the AE and lost to the thai's in the final of the japan open. I think this may just have all dented their confidence slightly or perhaps everyone has figured out how to beat them, who knows but they just seem to be in a bit of a slump after the peak of the olympics, like gao and zhang and slightly like gail and nathan who i dont think have also played as well as they did in that final.

I do think that the indo's doubles/singles is strong enough to beat china's but as you identified the mixed is the key point, neither widanto/natsir and zhang/gao are playing particularly well at the moment and certainly not very consistently with perhaps the indo pair being the most consistent of the pair, but the chinese do always peak well for the big tournaments. It is still hard however to look past china as favourites.

[hkv]

Hmm true, i didnt think he had done quite that well, but i couldnt see him beating for example, any of the top 3 chinese (especially with bao afer his blood from the thomas cup) nor taufik. A match with ponsana could be close but i would imagine johnasson would have the edge, but i guess it was quite a harsh evaluation cuased by my short sightedness. It is quite usefull that several of the players you cant see him beating do all play for the same few countries though, and the malasians wont even be there to contest it. Yes, Kenneth will have to play better than he has ever done before if he wants to beat Taufik or Lin Dan. But i think if denmark has to play Indonesia i think Gade will play the singles as he has played some quite even games with taufik and knows he actually can beat him. And if denmark has to play china i think jonassen will play, coz jonassen has been getting closer to beat lin dan the last couple of times, whereas there has been no real improvement for Gade in their meetings.

I definetly agrees with u that eriksen/schjoldager, gao/jun and partly nathan/gail are in a bit of a slump atm... but i dont think everyone knows how to play eriksen/schjoldager just because of their recent loses against the thai's and laybourn/juhl. eriksen/shjoldager doesnt like playing the thai's and never has... in generally they dont like playing pairs who build up their game from the defence, as the thais and partly laybourn/juhl does...

[jamesd20]

If Smith did play he would have to play first singles being the highest ranked player.

There is no 1st or second singles, SC only has one game in each discipline.

I see now reason why smith should have been picked. I think it is good that the BE pick the team on ability and are not fooled by the vagaries of the ranking system.

[AXC]

World rankings show Smith at place 22,Ghaffar at 32 and Kidd at 34 so it does seem strange that Smith is higher ranked than the other singles players and yet does not get into the squad. Was he available for selection or is there some sinister conspiracy at work here?

If Smith did play he would have to play first singles being the highest ranked player.

I believe that Smith has excellent sponsorship and plays as many tournaments as he can and does not train at MK by personal choice. Ghaffar and Kidd do train at MK and attend selected tournaments funded by BA of E. This may be a case where Smith is ranked higher because of the number of tournaments he plays but is not as good as Ghaffar and Kidd. It may be that Smith was not available for the event but I do not believe it was a conspiracy.

[Badboy]

smith has a back injury and with ghaffar and kidd being the same standard roughly whats the point in taking 3 singles players when there will be around 5 singles matches total.

[therealnathan]

smith isnt in the team cos his results are not good enough.
he's not at the same standard as ghaffar or kidd, back injury or not.
he has lost to two other english players this season, neither of whom are in the sc squad
the fact that he has the most international experience is nullified by the fact that his attitude whilst playing for england has been questioned and could result in little faith in him by the support staff or his fellow team members.

[Christina]

why aren't you in the team nathan? I noticed you were on the team nominations list but weren't selected for the squad. :confused: seems strange coz i thought you would've been selected.

[Badboy]

england lost 3-2 to denmark winning the mixed in 2 games, lost ghaffars singles to johnasson 6 n 0, lost tracey's singles in three 11:7 in the third, lost the mens 11+ 12 and won the womens doubles easy in two

[Michael Banks]

It was an interesting match with England having opportunities throughout to win the third rubber. At the end of the day the Danes were a little too strong but certainly not miles better which is encouraging. I thought the biggest difference was that Denmark were mentally stronger and had more composure at key points of the games, and maybe the mental side is something that the English team need to work on - they certainly had the shots to beat them.

[redkingjoe]

It was an interesting match with England having opportunities throughout to win the third rubber. At the end of the day the Danes were a little too strong but certainly not miles better which is encouraging. I thought the biggest difference was that Denmark were mentally stronger and had more composure at key points of the games, and maybe the mental side is something that the English team need to work on - they certainly had the shots to beat them.

Banks,

Well said. Excellent points. May be the Danes read the comments in our forum and improved:

(http://www.badders.com/news/item/672/Badminton-must-reach-out-and-go-global)

I have cut a small part of the article here:

There is no doubt that Danes and other Europeans can compete at the top level -- they have the skills and physique. But there is one important aspect -- mental toughness -- that I think the European players need to work on.

[chenhong]

i thought england played well against denmark.

i listened to darren hall on eurosport and he said how poor ghaffar performance was. i think his match against jonassen shows english singles needs a lot of improvement. ghaffar had nothing to beat jonassen with whereas jonassen had everything to beat ghaffar with. losing 5 and 0 in like 10 or 15 minutes must be embarassing.

jonassen was too quick and had too many shots fir ghaffar, ghaffar has no real winning shots which he needs to work on.

this is positive as he needs to work on those areas to push himself onto the top and where the big boys are playing.

[Michael Banks]

Any thoughts on the 5-0 whitewash against Korea? Some good performances especially Clark and Blair.

[Loafer]

managed to miss it all! only saw some of the denmark games unfortunately.

:(