ZB/GL - XD This pair is absolutely unstoppable. ZB's clear and transfer are so amazing and GL's net play is even better than when she paired with ZJ. They only lost one set so far to Robertson/Emms in more than 11 games! This pair is going to dominant XD for at least few years. The direct consequence is that China is going to keep Sudirman cup (only need XD, WS, WD) this year. KKK/TBH - MD This pair is young, powerful and had unbelievable few unforced errors that do NOT match their age. Their success shows under 21 point sysem, the only solution for MD is attacking, attacking and attacking. ZL - WS The young lady shows outstanding balanced mind and skills - she hasn't lost one single set this year! She is going to replace ZN and XXD and become the top player for a few years.
did you mean 11 matches? Good observation! Just want to add more for XD, totally agree with you. Zheng Bo is, and always is, a first class double player, even though he was a single player at the beginning, like all the other Chinese men's double players. ZB once teamed with Sang Yang, were as good as Fu/Cai, if not better. But they just could not get along. I think Zheng Bo is a man difficult to team with, but he is definitely one of the best. When he teamed with Xie ZhongBo, they beat Fu/Cai easily, and also invincible in Thomas cup. But for Chinese team, politics is important. There are so many stuff need to be take care of, not just the players potentials. For example, how to balance the will of the leaders. The communist leaders know little about badminton, but they have the power and personal favors and also personal relationships with the players advocates. So as the coach of the China badminton team, the very first task is not the best results from the tournaments, but to make the leaders happy. That's the top task, otherwise, LYB or whoever, would be fired without any negotiations. Then comes the 2nd task. What is the 2nd task for LYB? the best results from the tournaments? Not yet! the 2nd task is to balance the profits between each provincial teams and clubs, and especially to take care of some special provinces with close relationships. That way, he can hold his head coach positions. Otherwise, his position will not be stable. Then the 3rd task is to get good results from tournaments. the 4th is to take care of some key players, don't let them against you. Because of all these reasons, it is difficult to pair doubles in China when the pair has not deliver stable results, even though they are very potential. ZhengBo was teamed with Zhang Jiewen who is probably the best female double players after Ge Fei. Zheng/Zhang were very good, and beat Zhang Jun/Gao Lin with ease. But because many reasons, this pair also could not last long. This time, Zhang Jun's wedding gave ZhengBo's chance. Everybody knows ZhengBo would be better than Zhang Jun, but difficult to replace if there is no results yet. Zhang Jun's wedding is really not a smart choice for his career at that time, so that resulted in the end of his career.
Thanks for clearing things up - yes it is 11 matches, probably more than that (AG, MO and KO) Although what your comments about the politics in Chinese badminton team is partly true, which phenomenon, in my opinion, exists in every single country in this world, I still disagree with you that the rankings of the tasks. It seems to me that the #1 thing of Chinese badminton team is Olympics, T/U/S cups. Tournaments are getting more important only when it is related to how many athletes can attend Olympics. This is because everybody in China knows Badminton is dominated by China so everybody is anticipating they win a lot of gold medals in Olympics. If LYB only got two gold medals (totally hypothesis) in Beijing 2008, he might lose his position whatever how close he is with the leaders. Again, this is the same in almost every country, especially countries that people living there love this sports and a lot of good athletes living there, such as Indonesia and Malysia. Besides that, I don't think Zhang jiewen is that good - probably due to some injuries. Yang wei plays major role in YW/ZJW pair. They won only when Zhang Jiewen played well (like 2004 olympics and 2005 WC) because Yangwei is always consistant. Once Zhang jiewen is not consistent, they are in trouble. There is some problem with this pair too - part of reasons why they are not treated as superstar. Gao Ling is absolutely the second Ge Fei to me. It is very hard to break up a pair especially when this pair won two olympics title (ZJ/GL). Look how much pressure Malayia coach faced when he replace KKK's previous partner with TBH. KKK and his previous partner didn't even win any major title (OG, WC etc).
Dont think doubles is only bout brainless attacking. Only the smarter pair can go far, esp when the person in front can dominate the net, the pair will be difficult to beat. KKK does a very good job as the setter and super aggressive at the net.
Where is your source come from? It is funny seeing people with such impression toward Chinese communist party like we are still at the 80's.
When did Zheng Bo pair with Zhang Jiewen? He paired with Zhao TT for a while, and he paired with Huang Sui when representing Hunan province. Also I really dont think Sang Yang/Zheng Bo was ever better than Cai/Fu. Cai/Fu always won when the two pairs met, like LD always won when met BCL. I noticed that GL played better now than when she was with ZJ in the past one or two years. I guess ZJ/GL have been together for too long and have both been kind of tired. But I seriouly think ZB/GL would stand no chance against Kim/Ra, although they may do better than ZJ/GL when facing lower level pairs. ZB's smashes are much weaker than ZJ's smashes around 2000. ZJ should have his due credit. Finally, my impression of the MAS XD final is that Robertson hasn't been training seriously in the past few months. He is so slow and weak. ZB/GL will have to fight very hard should Robertson decide to be serious some time, say in the AE or WC this year.
When is that? Which open? Must be before 2003... But at that time Zheng Bo was still largely unknown...
I am amazed at how people perceive China - politics, sports, etc. which lead them to be prejudiced & judgemental. Frankly, China is a sports powerhouse and therefore competition is very keen. Only the players and their coaches know best. For the rest of us, it's just purely guess work & perception. Wonder how we would have fared if we were of them???
Stars of Malaysian Open & Korean Open 2007: KKK/TBH (MAS), LYD/JJS (KOR), TG/CW (US-INA) Gao Ling/Zheng Bo (CHN) Peter Gade (DEN), Lin Dan (CHN), PSH (KOR), CJ (CHN) Gao Ling/Huang Sui (CHN)
huhu....koo n tan r matched 2gether....... but,dey r not too co-operative on da malaysia open!!their game a bit clumsy lo..!!
I can't find any record of them beating Kim and Ra. They did play the Koreans, though, in the final of the 2003 Singapore Open. Kim/Ra won 15-5,15-3. This is the only match the BWF site lists for these two pairs, too, in their head-to-head function. Zheng/Zhang did well to reach the finals in Singapore that year, though, and they beat Kim Yong-hyun and Lee Hyo-jung on the way, avenging their loss to the Koreans the previous month, in the round of 32 in the World Championships.
zb/gl and kkk/tbh for sure... they have shown tat they are the best so far.. except for kkk/tbh who lost in KO.. but there are still apparently the best performing MD pair this year so far...
i think shud be no prob for them.. cy/fhf not coming... tg/cw not playing as well... only INA charges coming after them.... ;p
