I was looking at the world rankings and wrote out the placings as of today against the countries: (shown in order of their first placed player) CHINA 1,5,6,11,17 KOR 2,7,27,32 DEN 3,9,13,18,30,37 MAL 4,12,16,19,24,36,43,55,59 INA 8,14,57 SIN 10,39 HKG 15,22,39 JPN 20,21,26,33,34,48,49 GER 23,38,44,46 POL 25,45 NED 28 THA 29 FIN 31,47 AUT 35 SWE 41 CAN 42 CZE 50 ESP 51,54 ENG 52,56 GUA 53 FRA 58 WAL 60 There are 22 countries in the top 60. Malaysia have the most (9) followed by Japan. Clearly China come out top every way you look at it, for first player, team of three or five they are ahead. Korea have two outstanding players but then a big drop. Denmark have the only top 20 europeans. If you are English notice there 18 countries with a higher ranked player than our no.1, including Spain, Austria, Fin (twice), Czech, Poland (twice). Even winning both mens doubles we could soon be struggling to pick up a singles point against these other Euro sides in TC! While I know the rankings are not a precise guide to form what do these mean for the Thomas Cup and future success. Will we see Hong Kong and Singapore challenging the big 5 in future TC? If the order above was translated into TC results (i.e. the higher ranked player won always in direct match up) China would win all three against anyone, Korea would win 2 out of three against anyone but China.
Fascinating..........I cant think of anything else to say. Quite worrying for england that 18 out of the 22 countries are "ahead" of us, by the rankings, better get training to do something about it!!
Exactly as u stated in the 1st sentence, sometimes, the rank can't really reflect everything. In TC, each player basically play 1 game, so, it highly depend on how he perform that day. It's very possible, #1 or #2 will be "upset" (actually, not too much gap in between) by a #15 or so. However, it will be much harder for a #40+ do achieve such task, unless he's come out of injury (less tournies) or a rising star. As for HK and Singapore, I don't think they can provide serious threat to the power house as for now. As I stated above, #30-40 can hardly give trouble to the top 10s. Never have to metion, both of them kinda lack of consistent performing double pairs.
Great Effort.. Never Knew Malaysia have so many in the Ranking. I hope next time , we will have more in the top 10 .
Sure I would be the first to say that ranking doesn't reflect anything and anyone within the top 20 can beat another on a one off match. But it does show the emerging strength of some nations, and the failing strength of others, and of course these rankings will be used to qualify each countries 1,2 or 3 players for Olympics next year. ynxfan, you're joking about Scotland? , their top player is 173!!! Their next 275. Although of course in the eighties Scotland had world top 20 players.
173?! Are the Scots good at anything (besides complaining about the weather)? Anyone got the rankings for the world bagpipe & tossing the caber championships? Now, I bet Scotland are No.1 at those events - because no other nation of loons would invent or practise such sports.
With respect to Scotland they have had the world no.1 in squash and Blair (Eng) was Scottish. Its a cultural thing I guess, just as England have fallen from their highpoint in the eighties!
ranking England's finished just like in cricket, football(if I see 1966 shown again I'll have throttle someone) tennis and badminton is a joke. Too much politics and the old boy's club is well preserved. Unless there is a shake-up in the management badminton is doomed. I spoke to a very highly regarded coach and he told me that the players were only interested in being no.1 in England and not beyond. I guess they just want to secure their lottery funding and that's good enough. Oh Dear!!!!!
I think it is a lot easier to an emerging nation in a sport than one with an ancient history of success. I mean Canada are pleased to be in top 50, we won't be pleased unless top 5!!!
Well the rankings break down in May 97 (six and a half years ago were this) DEN 1,6,10,18,19,24,25,28,41,47,55,58 CHN 2,3,13,17,23,32,40,42,59 MAS 4,9,26,30,34,37,50,53 TPE 5 INA 7,8,11,14,15,16,21,22,31,36,38,39,45 KOR 12,27,29,56 HKG 20 SWE 33,44,54,57 NED 35,43,52 IND 46,60 ENG 48 USA 49 GER 51 Just 13 countries compared with 23 today and then just 4 countries had nearly three quarters of those top 60 places. Traditional European powerhouses like NED , SWE , ENG have been overtaken in these years by FIN, POL, GER. (I noticed on my origianl list I credited INA with 57th place, should have been IND!!) Few players have lasted on the rankings those six years, notable exceptions: Gade, Rasmussen, Jonassen, Wijaya, Irwansyah (now Wales),Roslin Hashim, Boesen. Haughton was the ranked Englishman then and is still our national champion now.
actually, in comparison. the recent world rankings are much more representative of the actual strength of the players. as it is Olympics qualifying time, everybody are playing most tournaments. unlike before, when they only play a couple of tourneys a year. or some play all the tourneys they can to boost their rankings. no rankings will be completely accurate, there bound to be inaccuracies, but at least i disagree with much it less now than before.