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Sunday September 23, 2007

Badminton: End of our challenge

PETALING JAYA: The Malaysia challenge in the US$170,000 Taiwan Open ended with the exit of their men's and women's doubles pairs in contrasting fashion in the semi-finals in Taipei yesterday.

The unseeded Mohd Fairuzizuan Mohd Tazari-Mohd Zakry Abdul Latif gave a disappointing performance and crashed to a 24-22, 19-21, 9-21 defeat by former world champions Lars Paaske-Jonas Rasmussen of Denmark.

Fairuzizuan's game, especially, was littered with poor returns and many unforced errors.

The previous day, Fairuzizuan-Zakry had beaten Japan Open runners-up Alven Yulianto-Luluk Hadiyanto in the quarter-finals.

Good show: Chin Eei Hui (front) and Wong Pei Tty put a fight before going down to top seeds Chien Yu-chin-Cheng Wen-hsing of Taiwan 21-23, 21-15, 18-21 at the Taiwan Open.
And the failure to make their second appearance in the final of an international tournament after the Indonesian Open in June is certainly a big disappointment.

The top Malaysian women's pair of Chin Eei Hui-Wong Pei Tty, however, can walk talk even though they trooped out losers yesterday. They gave a determined effort in a 21-23, 21-15, 18-21 defeat by top seeds and world number four Chien Yu-chin-Cheng Wen-hsing of Taiwan.

The Malaysians led 9-3, 21-10 in the first game and were tied at 13-13 and 16-16 in the decider but allowed the Taiwanese to get back into the game.

“China did not send a team here and we had an equal chance as anyone else to go far in this tournament. But again, we missed an opportunity to reach our first final this year,” lamented Pei Tty in a telephone interview from Taipei.

“The problem with us is the lack of confidence. We had a good lead but we did not have good finishing. There were mistakes from our side. This is really disappointing.”

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