There is a fact that we can't foget. Effectiveness of zhang nan as a back court player is very low. His back court smashes are so weak and no clear wineers. So there is lot of pressure on liu cheng also.
Young di zijian can be used as partner for zhang nan. A row talent with a powerful attacking play and he is still 18 years old.
No clear winners maybe, but effective enough to get weak replies. You'll see more variation from ZN when he attack from the back. LC is just not good enough at the net. If you watched the match in Swiss Open, ZN was much more effective from the back with his placement smashes than LC who could hardly hit a winner. So ZN has to have killer smashes too from the back? What's the point of having LC as the powerhouse in the partnership if ZN has to do everything? There are many great pairs too with front court player being weaker at the back, for example Ahsan/Hendra. But Ahsan is very good at the net to make the formation of Ahsan at the net and Hendra at the back threatening enough.
I am afraid the LC ZN pairing will never succeed. Everytime you watch them play you are certain something will go wrong. LC has partnered ZN for a long enough time to see whether the partnership will work. I am afraid its too inconsistent.
He's just not top player material, unfortunately. And it has come to the point that I can't feel any sympathy towards LC at all, to be blunt. I blame the coaches for not seeing this nor doing anything about it after last year.
Liu/Zhang is safely through to R2. What a relief. They had a very shaky start, ZN mistimed most of his shots for the whole first two games and LC was being LC. It was quite alarming. I just hope it's not some kind of injury as ZN was wearing a bandage like thing around his upper arm.
Liu/Zhang is going to have another chance tomorrow. As I feared and suspected, looks like ZN's right arm/elbow is hurting. Don't think they can hold that long. I have no idea what coaches want by insisting this pair to keep on going, but seriously I don't really care about the Olympic Qualification. Can't they consider giving ZN a chance to try a different partner?
Zhang Nan barely saved that...although it should probably be said the opponents had a lot of nerves near match point. Liu Cheng is horrible at defending lmao. He's either gotta work on it, or just drive/block everything back since he's so inaccurate anyway.
It is rather sad and doesn't reflect well on CBA that they have this trump card in doubles, called Zhang Nan, but unable to use it to great effect simply for lack of a MD or XD partner to complement the extraordinarily talented Zhang Nan in the coming Tokyo 2020 Olympics. A pity.
All the potential great players are already in a good pairing which suit their styles, assuming they don't do double duty. CQC or Siwei could have been decent choices, but they are taken. I thought Li Junhui was an okay idea, but given that they won 2018 WC there's no need to break that pair up.
All the best ones I've in mind, guess you know who I'm referring to, are taken and Zhang Jun will be ill-advised to split them. That means, nobody else left. I'm afraid, I supposed it's too late to do anything about it, Zhang Nan just have to do his utmost and hope for the best in MD with Liu Cheng. He's already a multiple WC/OG gold medallist, perhaps not that much to regret, just unfortunate for Team China as the rest of the world has more or less caught up with them in almost all the disciplines.
Zhang/Liu should get oscar nomination for acting nothing happened when clearly the shuttlecock hit ZN's head and deflected across but of course why would they admit it though when its umpire call that count afterall. Glad that JPN pair didnt choke on match point.
No, ZN should lol. The JPN didn't need to choke, LC had done it for them (ever since he entered the court). That incident indeed left a bitter after taste though ZN, please just get a new partner
He sure does and he will have as many defeats as possible till the coach notices that TQ is the problem lol.
Honestly, why would it even come to this - why didn't the umpire call a fault, unbelievable. Let's hope Hoki never has to play KSS if this already causes him to refuse a handshake though, he'd probably implode on court before the match can even finish
Well, minions have met Hoki/Koba a lot of times. No problems or issues occur in all of their matches.
Because Marcus never hit a shuttle on Kevin's face on the way to the other side and the umpire failed to see it.