Hong Wei has never played with Zhang Nan. I'm still very interested to see how well those 2 would play together. Maybe they could be very good. Zhang Nan doesn't have the raw power that Chai Biao does. But I think he has better net skills and all-court skills.
This pair doing very well recently, winning German and Swiss Open almost back to back Had they partnered together for All England, they'd probably won that too Good future for them
It's a pity that many double players cannot decide who to play with. Even though KKK and TBH still want to play together, but BAM keeps threatening to split the pair. Same things happen in the China team. Players don't have the ultimate right to pick up their partners. That right belongs to the coaches and managers. Managers send different combinations to different tournaments to test which ones are the best. So Chai Biao/Hong Wei were sent to Germany open and Swiss open. In the all england open, China team managers tried different combinations: Chai Biao/Zhang Nan and Shen Ye/Hong Wei. Most coaches and managers insist that any successful pair must have one front court and one back court. So they strongly opposed the Hong Wei/Chai Biao combination. But both Hong Wei and Chai Biao wanted to play together. So what they can do, were to try hard in Germany open and Swiss open, and try less in the all England open. I doubt both Chai Biao and Hong Wei tried to lose on purpose in the All England open, so that they can persuade the managers to let them play together.
They wouldn't have qualified for the All England - so they sent both in their established combinations there.
That could be one of the reason, but HW/CB were listed as the 6th seed at Swiss open, which should have been qualified for just playing All England, at least for qualification round.
No. They had a nominal seeding at the SO because of their GO victory, which was not taken into account for the AE...
Please check again, HW/CH was the 6th seed at GO already. By they way, many much lower rated players/pairs, including scratch pair, including Bodin/Pakkawat can compete All England. There should be no question at all for they to play if they wanted to.
They had a nominal seeding - based on the last tournament results they got in their partnership, despite not having 10 results. And I don't disagree, they'll probably end up playing for a few tournaments at least - with those results, they show much potential. Let's see how they manage to stand up to the pressure once they're actually expected to win and other pairs start to work out tactics against them
agree. saying that this pair is the best already is a bit too earlier for me personally. let them proved more before we give them 'the best' title. 2 GPG wins still guarantee nothing. even after win a SS, some players back to struggle in next tournament. so let the players show some consistency first. acknowledge for being 'the best pair' will follow their results automatically, if they can proved more.
In the next tournament, Asian Championship, Chai Biao will play with Guo Zheng Dong, the worst combination comparing with CB/Zhang Nan, and CB/Liu XL. Hong Wei will still play with Shen Ye. Maybe the coach is still testing different combinations, or other political reasons. Ideally, it should be 100% players decision to choose their partners. But in China, things are different, it's a complicated society. There are many stack holders in choosing a double partner: 1) player himself or herself 2) coaches 3) managers 4) general administration bureau 5) provinces 6) clubs General admin bureau is the ultimate decision maker, but provinces are the driving force for the combinations.
I think ultimately the players should have a say, but coaches should actually make the decisions as they have the outside perspective and should be more objective. Sometimes you won't like a person very much but can play well with them - if you don't get put together by an outsider, you probably wouldn't try the combination despite its potential. As the coaches have the whole squad's best performance as a goal, they can make objective decisions while a player might want to play with the best one just because he himself could be successful.
I suspect that CHN wants to have the doubles player to have two good partners instead of just one as a contingency plan. Look what happens to Cai Yun/Fu Haifeng, when either one is injured, they are out of a tournament. Just speculating.
And they fell right down to earth with a defeat to the back-up Japanese pair in the INA SSP Qualifying Rounds.
Whether this unexpected and possibly humiliating defeat in the IO PSS Qualification rounds second match turns out to be devastating or a blessing in disguise to Chai Biao/Hong Wei,only time will tell. Actually,lately, CBA has been experimenting with different MD pairings and this is one of them and they haven't firm up yet as Hong Wei's partnership with Sheng Ye is also under consideration although they (HW/SY) have been together considerably longer than CB/HW. My thinking is that if this pairing CB/HW really has what it takes and aspires to the top, then such a humbling experience may be just what they need to strengthen their resolve, carry out more in-depth analysis and do some self-reflection as well. The point is not to find excuses and lightly brush it off as an isolated incident without doing anything about it. And there have been famous precedents such as Lin Dan's and Chen Long's well-documented respective debacles earlier in their careers, viz. the former's R1 loss in the 2004 Athens Olympics and the latter's R1 loss in the WC2011 - now,look where they are today. Personally, I'm more disappointed with Sun Yu's elimination, also in the IO PSS'13 qualies, and this is not the first time she was bundled out like this. Her fate seems to point to something more troubling with the young CHN WS cohort which has recently been underperforming as compared with their male counterparts,notably Tian Houwei and Xue Song. It may be a sign of a systemic problem in their training/structure or maybe it's just a temporary glitch that is serious enough to warrant CBA's concerted effort and full attention to nip it in the bud, the sooner the better.
Hi 2 cents, i 100% agree with ur statement, and i also think what are u thinking bro, thanks for ur information, ur analysis with big prove are well explained enough and i pretty sure they will dominate men's double after this
What happened to the so-called dominator of MD for the next 10 years eh? Another 一轮游 (first round defeat) for the Rainbow pair.
CB/HW are still an up-coming pair. They have potential, because they both are very powerful. But their serve and return are nowhere near the top 5 level that it needs to be. LYD/KSH will be around for many more years and will be a top pair. Setiawan/Ahsan is the other elite pair in the world. Bo/Mo, KKK/TBH are older and probably are declining in their skill. They way I see it is the MD will be a 4 way competition of the truly elite pairs: LXL/QZH, LYD/KSH, Setiawan/Ahsan, and maybe HB/CB.