BAM should shoulder some blame for blunders

KUALA LUMPUR: It has been quite a taxing month for the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) – having to manage a hectic tournament schedule and also in dealing with bad publicity that came with the resignation of coach Misbun Sidek.
But behind all these, there was one issue that the BAM should take a huge rap. It was their major blunder in not submitting the entries of the national back-up doubles pairs before the deadline in the home Open.
And it followed up with their lack of foresight that saw a poor number of representatives in the just concluded South Korea Open.
Aside from several elite shuttlers, only Teo Kok Siang-Goh Wei Shem qualified for the first BWF’s World Super Series Premier event because none of the other back-up players, especially in the singles, were among the top 90 in the world rankings.
Currently, their top singles back-up player is world No. 92 Liew Daren followed by Tan Chun Seang at the No. 96. Chun Seang, however, is still nursing an injury.
The future of Malaysian badminton is in the BAM’s development programme. Yet every year, they seem to neglect this area of importance.
Little focus is given to either their back-up or junior programmes while heavy investment is made on their dwindling number of elite squad players.
The BAM have promised a change this year. In fact, new coaches Zhou Kejian and Ng Mee Fen have been drafted in to strengthen the Bukit Jalil Sports School (BJSS) programme and several junior tournaments have been listed for the players.
Both the back-up singles and doubles coaches, Hendrawan and Tan Kim Her, have been given a bigger budget, which will enable them to send their charges to player in more lower grade tournaments.
Hopefully, by the start of next year, new faces will be making their presence felt in major tournaments or at least give some kind of pressure to the elite group.

Posted by Lucas Liau on 9:33 AM. Filed under Latest News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0