KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysia’s women’s doubles duo Pearly Tan and M. Thinaah have acknowledged that Malaysian badminton – unlike other top countries with greater depth in talent – cannot afford to split and reshuffle its pairs.
Pearly and Thinaah, who recently made history by becoming the first Malaysian women’s doubles team to reach the Olympic semi-finals, were knocked out in the quarter-finals of the Japan Open today.
They lost 17-21, 21-14, 21-10 to Paris Olympic silver medallists Liu Sheng Shu and Tan Ning of China.
Speaking to the Badminton World Federation (BWF), Pearly and Thinaah admitted that they had not fully recovered after the Olympics but decided, after consulting with their coaches, to compete in Japan as well as next week’s Korea Open.
“We’re not really happy with the result, but we just played in a very big tournament (the Olympics) and now we’re here in Japan. It took a lot of discussion for us to be here, and we just wanted to enjoy ourselves.
“There is definitely room for improvement, but we hope to come back stronger after some good rest,” said Thinaah.
When asked about other countries splitting and reshuffling their pairs, Thinaah responded: “These countries have a lot of good players, so they can afford to split and reshuffle their pairs.
“That doesn’t make it easier for us because it’s still challenging. For us, we just need to be prepared to play against anyone.”
Pearly highlighted the importance of carrying the confidence they found in Paris and working on their consistency moving forward.
“We still have a lot of confidence in ourselves, and we both recognise that. We just need to work on our consistency and stay focused in our next tournament, the Korea Open.
“There were some positives from today’s match, like our service receiving in the first game. We fell short because we couldn’t manage their power after that, which is something we need to learn from,” added Pearly.
Having broken into the world’s top 10 for the first time since October last year, Pearly and Thinaah are now focused on qualifying for the World Tour Finals this year.
Currently, they are ranked number 17 in the Race to Finals standings and will need to reach the top eight by November to qualify for the season-ending finale in Hangzhou on December 11-15.
“We want to focus on one tournament at a time, but I believe it’s every pair’s goal to qualify for the World Tour Finals. We just need to concentrate on ourselves and try to regain our momentum and strategy,” Thinaah concluded.
Pearly and Thinaah have made two previous appearances at the World Tour Finals, in 2021 and 2022, but did not progress beyond the group stages in either edition. – August 23, 2024