Thursday February 9, 2012

BAM will parade top guns for first Axiata Cup

KUALA LUMPUR: The Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) are supportive of the inaugural Axiata Cup invitational team tournament and will parade their top guns – world No. 1 Lee Chong Wei and world No. 6 men’s doubles pair Koo Kien Keat-Tan Boon Heong.

BAM deputy president Datuk Dr Al-Amin Majid said the Axiata Cup, offering the biggest prize money of US$1mil in team tournaments, is a shot in the arm for the game.

“We like the idea of this tournament and we will name Chong Wei as well as Kien Keat-Boon Heong in our team,” said Al-Amin.

“I know we may be involved in the Thomas Cup in May and as this is an Olympic year, we have to discuss the matter with the coaching and training committee.”

Al-Amin also added that BAM are open to the idea of inviting non-BAM players or even foreign players to join the team.

The Axiata Cup allows each team to field foreigners in either the singles or the doubles.

“Tournaments like these are good for development and we can invite players from local clubs or other countries to play.

All this, however, will be decided during the next coaching and training committee meeting,” said Al-Amin.

The Axiata Cup will feature six countries in South East Asia – Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines with Malaysia and Indonesia fielding two teams. The format of play is two singles and one doubles tie.

It will also introduce home and away matches from the semi-final stage.

The winning team will pocket US$400,000 while the runners-up will receive US$200,000.

However, a potential pitfall for the tournament is that it starts on March 23 and ends on April 15 – a full three weeks.

Should Malaysia qualify for the Thomas Cup Finals when the qualifying rounds begin next Monday at Macau, it could severely hamper the team’s preparations as the Finals will be held from May 20-27 at Wuhan, China.

Nevertheless, group chief executive officer of Total Sports Asia (TSA) and the organisers of the event, Marcus Reus, said they have taken the dates of the Thomas Cup and Olympics into account.

“We have a tight calendar but the Badminton World Federation (BWF) agreed to the dates and this is the best available slot and it shouldn’t affect the Thomas Cup much while the Olympics is still far away,” said Reus.

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