From now on hear one thing. After some research I have found that CHN has only lost dominance in WS. Let me give you my take on all the disciplines of Badminton regarding CHN. Men's Singles CHN has not dominated MS ever. There has always been challengers, sometimes even winning major titles over CHN. Keeping this in mind, CHN still has pretty good strength in MS. This is evident when on looks at rankings where 4 of the top 10 players are CHN. If one looks at age brackets, for the 30+ age bracket, CHN has Lin Dan. The only near peer is LCW. In 25-30 age bracket, CHN has Chen Long, and Tian Houwei. Chen Long is by far the best player in this bracket, who is only occasionally challenged by other players. There needs to be major changes for Tian Houwei if he ever wants to be a real contender for major titles. The window is slipping for Tian Houwei, he may just end up becoming the next Wang Zhengming. In 22-25, this is where CHN has no strong players. Here Viktor Axelsen rules. In 19-22 bracket, CHN has only Shi Yuqi, who is the best player of this bracket. Yet, CHN has done it's normal mistake of not cultivating young players enough. Song Xue, Lin Guipu, and others should have been cultivated better. Leading upto Tokyo Olympics, the primary task should be to cultivate youngsters. Women's Singles This is the place where CHN has remarkably lost dominance. CHN was THE most dominant power here, and the dominance was supreme, as can be seen from the fact that 3 of the top 4 players leading up to London were Chinese. And the fault is not only of CHN. The other teams have indeed caught up, specially by focusing intensively on their young talents. Even upto 2014, CHN was dominating the field, with most superseries won by CHN. But then came the crop of players including, Ratchanok, Carolina, Sindhu, Akane, Nozomi, Tai, etc. The single biggest problem has been the total absence on cultivating young players, and the mental/physical problems of Li Xuerui. Wang Yihan and Wang Shixian couldn't deliver the goods for CHN.
Men's Doubles Among all major disciplines, CHN has been the weakest in MD. It was only due to the exceptional pairing of Fu Haifeng/ Cai Yun that CHN was able to win major tournaments and events recently. And in stark contrast to other disciplines, where senior players ruled the roost, perhaps due to demands and necessity, CHN has been relatively most successful in grooming Men's Doubles players. The current MD WR 1 are a great example. The Olympic Gold in Rio was to put it politely a good fortune. Women's Doubles This is the case of criminal negligence and mismanagement. Just outrageous! In 2013 Superseries, CHN won 11 of the 12 superseries! Bao Yixin and Tang Jinhua were the magic pairing, winning their way to umpteen number of titles. In 2014, CHN again won 11 of the 12 superseries. In 2015, CHN won 9 of the 12 superseries! So in 3 years, they won, 31 of the 36 superseries! And some were not won because CHN didn't field any strong candidate. This is enough to show the depth and strength of the squad. Basically in the middle the conditions were such, that CHN was fielding new, scratch pairings in every other tournaments which were going all the way to the semis, finals, and even winning finals. The player pool included: Bao Yixin (who was described by Gill Clarke herself as one of the best players ever), Tang Yuanting, Zhao Yunlei, Tian Qing, Tang Jinhua, Ou Dongni, Yu Xiaohan, Zhong Qianxin, Ma Jin, Wang Xiaoli, Yu Yang, Huang Yaqiong, Chen Qingchen. But CHN team kept changing the pairs, kept repeating it, and at the end of the day ended up choosing one of the clearly second rate players. During the season, Bao Yixin and Tang Jinhua have established clear dominance for some time. But due to whatever problems, they were broken up. Bao and TYT were assembled, and they won back to back tournaments, in fact the only tournaments they played! Mistakes: Not deciding and settling on pairs long before hand. Clearly giving a pass to Yu Yang, who was not in best form. She became a drag on TYT. This was clear favoritism. Since the players were kept rotating, very good pairs didn't have enough ranking points. Result: Yu Yang/TYT and Luo/Luo were chosen. Both of these players were among the worst pairs fielded by CHN in the last couple of years. The best pair they had was Tian Qing/Zhao Yunlei and Bao Yixin/Tang Yuanting. Both were missed due to different reasons. Now today, no one knows where these crop of players are. The seniors have retired, but where are TYT, Bao Yixin? In fact according to me, Tian Qing and Zhao Yunlei retired prematurely. They had it in them to go one more Olympic Cycle.
Quite true, if CHN didn't screw up the WD selection and Zhao Yunelei hadn't withdrew last minute, who knows CHN might win 4 of the 5 golds at Rio'16. That's all water under the bridge now. CBA better make sure not to repeat the same mistake.
Bao Yixin is partnering Yu Xiaohan in some tournaments lately, still is. Ou Dongni temporarily out of the picture, not sure why.
But will they learn? Bao Yixin should be immediately paired with either Tang Jinhua, or TYT. All three are world class players. Did anyone get fired in the whole Chinese coaching bench? Chen Jin?
Mentioning about the present time.. what Devendra mentioned many were true but too unpleasant to recall... let bygones be bygones... but for those who get involved in taking care the biz, should never forget the bitter lessons ... a lifetime lecture! In WS, Sun Yu to me is likened a dead wood, tried so many times, but fails to deliver. Never really like her play and court mentality/attitute. He Bingjiao is also quite doubtful. Same for Tian Houwei, never really like his play. CHEN Yufei may be one of the best hopeful in WS. Time for CBA to ditch the dead wood and prioritize the young cohort in the int'l circuits. After recouping some successes I hope LYB may step aside and let some fresh one (perhaps Cai Yun or else) taking the tremendous challenges to grow the national power.. I'm aware it's disgraceful to step down in failure after so many glorious achievements in the past but at good times it's fine. This may be the sole reason why LYB wasn't kicked out right immediately after the Rio fiasco as Justin mentioned. In China the decision makers are getting used to think long and seeing from broader perspectives and be careful in making decisions... outsiders may find it hard to understand the thought process there. There are already many young WD, MD, XD, just allow some more time to grow them. MS still lags behind in nurturing the hopeful. THE FOCUS SHOULD BE EMPHASIZED ON THE YOUNG, NEW GENERATION! More participation in the int'l circuits, Int'l Challenges/GP/GPG/ etc as appropriate. Being down after being high for quite some time is natural in life and is not a shame. But taking no serious efforts to amend the situation at low is what a shame, but I believe the situation is not like that. Just need to be patient and wait for some more time (a year or two) to see the remedy. The correct time frame will provide the correct view and vice versa! This kind of thing happened on her volleyball too in the past.
Nope, no coaching staff, not even Li Yongbo was punished except for a reprimand. Unfortunately, it seems to be business as usual, the latest coaching lineup until the Tokyo Olympics only showed one change made and that is the promotion of Pan Li as the WD chief coach. You can go back a few pages to read some of our discussions.
The current WD pairs: HUANG Yaqiong/TANG Jinhua ==> will play in the finals of CELCOM AXIATA Malaysia Open tomorrow (09 April) CHEN Qingchen/JIA Yifan BAO Yixin/YU Xiaohan HUANG Dongping/LI Yinhui @Devendra, it seems you've been lapsed in noticing the today's squad
Yeah, IF Zhao YL hadn't withdrew things might be brighter for CHN... she affected two disciplines, XD & WD, so who knows.... just blamed someone or few and tried to find some scapegoat(s) were not the solution... just need to rectify the weakness and amplify the strength... that's all! And be patient to harvest the fruit there's no such magic thing or shortcut for instant success in life...
Glad that the problems with Chinese badminton is being discussed openly. But do you think the selection process will change? To get ranking points the players need to be selected. Who decides which pairings or players should be entered in a tournament.If you don't participate you don't earn any points. The American system of the top three in the selection games represents the country in the Olympics is a very transparent system. To stop any dissatisfaction in the selection process something like this should be implemented.
You see, when top management wants to replace the coaches who haven't committed any serious offence or underperformed too badly, you got to find some other people who are considered better or more promising, and that's not easy. The fact is most of these coaches have remarkable proven track records in their curriculum vitae, so just one Olympic failure or a couple years of flops relative to their glorious past is not going to adversely affect them too much. Still, I personally very much like to see more changes made in CBA as discussed here. The newly mostly reappointed coaches team is too conservative , none of them is going to introduce much changes or new ways of doing things as I don't expect anyone of them to rock the boat. Actually, I'd think that having the outspoken Cai Yun onboard as one of the Deputy Head Coaches assisting Li Yongbo and assigning him a considerable role to play in the national team setup and training regiment would be a good idea. I understand he has expressed his thoughts and ideas openly online and to the newsmedia and CBA needs someone like him who dares to change. As far as I'm aware,he is currently studying to be a coach (may have completed his course and got his certificate already,perhaps). Let's see if LYB would take him in one day assuming CY is interested in taking up a coaching role. I mean,LYB was very keen to have Lin Dan as a coach once and we know what he's like, an independent character who will speak his mind, so I don't see why LYB wouldn't have Cai Yun, another maverick but very capable person, under his wing.
I guess the badminton in China is under the "small ball" category, same as table tennis, means both sports may have the same higher departmental top management; contrasted with volleyball, basketball, football (soccer) under "big ball" category. To reflect from the table tennis, it's said that Liu Guoliang will focus as the head coach for the entire NT (both men's & women's), his previous role as the Men’s Team Head Coach will be taken by Qin Zhijian. And Wang Hao and Ma Lin are now part of coaching team ==> Changes in coaching team! Read here for more. And just as an illustration on how serious the TT team select its players for upcoming Liebherr 2017 World Table Tennis Championships (WTTC), it has the so-called the "Marvellous 12", that is 12 players each in men's and women's teams to compete very fiercely in weeks-long competition to obtain some tickets to the WTTC. Just look at for "Chinese Trials for World Championships 2017 Table Tennis" to read more. What badminton may learn from TT is the infusion of the new talents in the coaching team by those former top achieving players with interests and coaching skills... and the comprehensive internal competition in picking up players for the important events. Of course the two branches have different depth thus facing different situation but the idea is there. Knowing how methodical the managements of TT and women's volleyball (those sports that I have interest so pay some attention) in managing their challenges and achievements by utilizing the many resources I can only guess more or less the same thing is also applied to badminton though the outcome varies.
I hope that with the re-working of tournament levels in 2018, CBA will send its youngsters to more tournaments. There are now 16 superseries tournaments or higher, so I figure that the 7 lower-tier ones and 11 GPG-equivalent tournaments can be better hunting grounds for CBA youngsters should they attend. Having some success at the GP/GPG level would, I think help younger players gain a bit of confidence when they do enter the SS circuit in earnest. CBA has always declined to enter anyone into a number of GPG events in non-OG qualification years. Some of these are probably more understandable than other (USA GPG, for instance), but you would think it couldn't be that much work/$$ to enter some like MAS/IND/AUS/NZL, etc?
Also, please do not make Zheng Siwei play MD in future...that will only make both ZSW and CQC's lives very hard
Don't think so! Capability to win over the foreign contenders is the most important in the consideration. No point excel at domestic competition but not performing at int'l levels.
Thanks for this. Its a very good system of selection. How nice for badminton to have something like this. Notice how the coaches are all world champions giving their knowledge and experience to the juniors. They appear to work very well together.
Thanks for this. Its a very good system of selection. How nice for badminton to have something like this. Notice how the coaches are all world champions giving their knowledge and experience to the juniors. They appear to work very well together.
