TOTAL BWF SUDIRMAN Cup 2019 : Quarterfinal - FINAL (23-26 May)

I am sure Okuhara knows the national head coach's sentiments, and her departure from Unisys was most definitely fuelled by the fact that she wants to focus on the Olympics. But her aspirations are not necessarily converting into results. In the article, PJB mentions that she has not won a single tournament at the 750 level or above since the 2017 World Championships, and puts this down to the fact that he can't see the hunger in her that he saw in 2017. There is no further elaboration.

With Momota, conversely, the drive to win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics seems obvious to PJB. But, actually, this is quite ironic, as in his interviews to the mass media, Momota is always at pains to explain that he is not focusing on the Olympics at the moment, but on giving his best at each and every game that he plays.

Incidentally, PJB's objective for the Olympics is to have two players/pairs entered in each of the five categories. Whilst he considers this possible in MS, WS, and WD, he is slightly anxious that Endo/Watanabe may not be able to remain in the top eight, and needless to say, thinks that entering a second pair in the XD is going to be challenging.

Personally, I am beginning to harbour doubts about the men's singles, too.

 

When checking statistics, one cannot use a small number of samples.

China was a finalist in the last 13 Sudirman Cups: out of those 13 consecutive finals,
5 were held in China and all 5 were won 3-0.
Among the remaining 8, China lost 2, and for the 6 victories, the other finalist was blanked only 3 times.

That suggests a strong homecourt advantage, at least when it comes to finals.

I don't think that proves anything.
We would have at least to see the results of say 6 matches SYQ vs KM outside China:
imagine the record was 6-0 outside China for KM, it would suggest a bias.

 

Don't just look at Sudirman Cups for which CHN happened to host quite many, what about Thomas and Uber Cups, Asian Games? How many CHN won on foreign soil?

As for sample size,I used all that's available. Again,what about the home advantage for non-CHN players?

As for Shi Yuqi, you may have confused the point I'm making. Some people are arguing that SYQ enjoyed homeground advantage, yet he won only twice in six meetings.

 

I don't know about football/soccer, a team sport, 11-a-side and reserves are used during the game, and only one discipline, not five individual categories as in Badminton.

As for badminton, when CHN was dominant in almost all five disciplines, that itself is an undeniable big advantage.

For this 2019 edition of the Sudirman Cup, CHN is not the hot favourite, it's JPN. And prior to the tournament, Momota was reported to have declared their intention to win it from the Chinese in China and celebrate by throwing PJB into the air, that's how confident they were.

 

In fact,I never deny any home advantage , only that I think it's overblown, not as significant as some people here claimed.

I mean, if you are the best player in the world, and yet you believe you can't beat your main rival(s) in their homeland because they enjoy homeground advantage then it's your own problem, nobody can help you overcome that self-defeatist attitude. Are you really the best of the best ?

Yes, home advantage is a bonus only if you are ready and good enough to take on the best in the world.

 

It makes me wonder why all those years, BAM never thought of hosting another World Championships in MAS to help LCW beat Lin Dan apart from the one occasion in 2007 which was contested by Lin Dan and Sony Kuncoro, where, incidentally, LCW as the 2nd seed only made it to the third round.

 

What are you babbling about. If you didn't deny home advantage, what was the long essay for? Every players benefit from home ground, that's a fact. Whether they can use it to their own strength or not and win the match, that's another matter.

 

If you want to infer anything from statistics,
it's much more reliable when there is a high number of samples:
the Sudirman cup looks much better with that respect.

Same issue: not enough samples to infer anything.

Let me clarify: a 4-2 record in China does not say anything alone in homeground advantage.
To say something, you need a control experiment, that is a record outside China too.
In my hypothetical example, imagine you have two records: 4-2 in China and 6-0 outside China,
then you can say something.
A homeground advantage does not necessarily mean that SYQ would win all his matches:
it only means there is a higher probability for SYQ of winning in China than outside China.

 

This is a terribly incorrect statistical conclusion. In logistic regression, which involves two categorical variables e.g home-ground or not home-ground, analysts assign dummy variables e.g 0 or 1 to the respective categorical variables and regress based on these dummy variables. There is no way to deduce whether one variable e.g whether one is on home-ground, has an effect on the outcome if there is no historical data with the other variable i.e no home-ground to regress against.

Put in simple words, one cannot say just because Shi Yuqi lost 4 out of 6 meetings in China, homeground advantage is irrelevant, because he might have lost even more/with worse scorelines if the 6 meetings were out of China. There is simply no way to know without historical data of the same matches played outside China, ceteris paribus.

 

More than home court advantage, the format of the tournament itself needs to be discussed.

One team is playing their quarter final on thursday, while the other plays theirs on friday.
One team has an early session, the other a late session, up to and including the semi final on saturday: 13pm/19pm (2015), 12pm/18pm (2017) or even 11am/18pm (2019).
If one team is on the negative side of both those variables, I don't know how you can call the final an even contest.

The last three Sudirman Cups were all won by teams that didn't have to play on friday and then played the early session on saturday (this doesn't prove causality, given the small sample size, still interesting to know imo).
This is not that much of an issue for China (even though they were on the receiving end of this disparity in 2017), who still have the most amazing depth across all disciplines, but especially for smaller nations, who need to play their top players from at least the quarter finals, this makes winning the tournament nigh on impossible.

That this is a major disadvantage is acknowledged by the way nearly every other tournament is scheduled (except WC): to ensure the most fair competion, especially for singles players, the tournament organizers usually try to put the singles match as close together as possible. Thus, the average rest difference between singles players in all 750/1000 events + WTF and the WC has been 2 hours, 4 minutes. The one between KM and SYQ was 7 hours 47 minutes.

The format of the Sudirman Cup needs to be changed to that of the TUC.

 

As president of CBA, Zhang Jun's optimism is to be expected. As it is now in the 5 categories, China has the respective players capable of challenging their Japanese and Indonesian opponents. On home soil, Japan has the advantage. As of now to July next year, anything can happen to alter the predictions.

 

Well it's a tournament to see which nation has the best mixed team in the world. I am afraid the team with the most better players overall should be the winner (the best). Japan had the chance to field their second players/pairs (Nishimoto for example) instead but they hadn't and decided to field Momota for consecutive days. The same with other nations, if their second players were not good enough to win matches against the others, didn't it mean that their team wasn't good enough to win the 'strongest/best' team in the world?

With many ties to be played in multiple sessions a day, those with better 'luck' to have the best fitting schedule will benefit more. But that's just how these tournaments had been held. Then again, one nation could have chosen their alternative players to reduce the chance of the other players to get fatigued and less prepared etc.

There is no such thing as what you might call fair competition here I suppose. In TUC, where 3 MS/WS and 2 MD/WD a tie, one or two players will not have the opportunity to have a full one day rest. But in SC : 1 MS, 1 WS, 1 MD, 1 WD and 1 XD each per tie, there are more chance to have one player/pair to rest completely for a day depends on what their overall strategy is. The only thing that could be consider is the order of the match. Some team even try to alter it by fielding the same players in at least two different disciplines.

 

In a match, I have observed that the "style of play" of the 2 opponents is important. SYQ's style of play is suitable to counter KM's style of play. This was evident in the WTF2018 and Sudirman Final. One of them will win the Olympic gold, with KM having the higher probability in Japan.

 

AFAIK, the next SC will use the same format as TUC. It means the next SC will be truly contested by only 16 teams (no more Group 2,3,4). The Continental Mixed Team Championship will play its role for determining the teams that qualify to the next SC. However, the scheduling will be left to be desired. Can't really have 2 SF ties on the same schedule in this big tournament.

 

I like having the two SF to be played on the same day though. Maybe on two courts simultaneously for a fairer schedule? (more rest for all the players)

 

That means the audiences will have split focus as they can't possibly concentrate on watching these both two ties.

 

So, you want it fair for the players or more service for the audience? Can't have both ways. If they are played on different day, there will be another issue for the resting time (too long for losing the feel of the game or too short for fatigue etc).
For those watching live streaming can always have split windows anyway haha.

 

Hmmm, maybe the organizers can take a leaf from the Grand Slam SF and F? I don't really know about the timings there, but Grand Slam really brings out the players' full capability and the audiences' satisfaction.