Contrasting fortunes: Malaysia’s M. Thinaah and Pearly Tan react while China’s Chen Qingchen-Jia Yifan celebrate after their women’s doubles semi-final clash. — AFP
IT was the French Open badminton final in Paris. And in a nail-biting match that lasted 72 minutes, Malaysia’s Pearly Tan and M. Thinaah performed an incredible feat.
Showing some amazing fighting spirit, they stole the show in a thrilling 21-19, 18-21, 21-15 final win over Japanese two-time world champions Mayu Matsumoto-Wakana Nagahara.
In the quarter-finals, they had beaten another Japanese pair Nami Matsuyama-Chiharu Shida.
That was in 2022.
Now, the Malaysian pair will have to produce that magic in Paris again if they are to end their brave Paris Olympics campaign with a historic bronze medal.
Pearly-Thinaah fought their hearts out yesterday before losing 12-21, 21-18, 15-21 to world No. 1 Chen Qingchen-Jia Yifan in the women’s doubles semi-final at the Adidas Arena in Port de la Chapelle.
They will now face-off again with Matsuyama-Shida, who suffered a 16-21, 19-21 defeat at the hands of anther Chinese pair, world No. 3 Liu Shengshu-Tan Ning.
The 2022 French Open was the only time Pearly-Thinaah have beaten Matsuyama-Shida in their past 10 meetings and they face a tough task to repeat their performance of two years ago, but national coaching director Rexy Mainaky hopes to rally his charges for one last battle.
“Pearly-Thinaah lost today (yesterday) but gave a good fight,” said Rexy.
“In the first game, Pearly made several mistakes but in the second game, she found her rhythm and China made errors.
“In the third game, our pair stayed back a bit in the beginning. Overall, both Pearly and Thinaah have played well in the competition from the group stage to the semi-final.
“Now, we need to keep their spirits up for the bronze medal playoff match.”
Pearly-Thinaah have already created history by becoming the first Malaysian women’s doubles pair to reach the semi-finals in the Olympics. They can further etch their names in the history books by winning a maiden bronze for the country in the event.An emotional Thinaah has vowed to give her all to defy the odds once again.
“We just wanted to focus on ourselves and enjoy every moment on court. I think we have been doing this, so we won’t have any regrets,” said Thinaah in a post-match interview with the Badminton World Federation (BWF) after the defeat against the Chinese.
“It has not been an easy road for us since the group stage,” said Thinaah. “Many did not believe in us at first but we just wanted to believe in each other. We are really happy to have come this far but we still have another match to go. We want to stay focused and give our best.”
Pearly believes she and Thinaah need to take the lessons from their defeat to Qingchen-Yifan and try to improve in their next match.
“The Chinese pair do not give away too many points. Sometimes when we lose focus, we tend to continuously throw away some points,” said Pearly.
“Mentally, they are very strong, that’s why they are world No. 1 and I think that’s what we still need to learn from them.”
Still, the Malaysian pair made it out of the group of death and were the only ones to take a game off the Chinese top guns. Now, they can gun for the Japanese.
