Unheralded Leong Jun Hao emerged Malaysia’s hero in the Thomas Cup quarterfinals, swinging the tie his team’s way to help them get the better of Japan and take a last-four place against China.
Malaysia had entered the Thomas Cup with proven strength in first singles (Lee Zii Jia) and the two doubles, but somewhat lean in their second and third singles in terms of past achievement; Leong however blew away his higher-ranked opponent in just 35 minutes, 21-13 21-10. That was the edge Malaysia needed.
“I prepared as if it were my last match,” said Leong. “I told myself to fight for every point. My opponent had more pressure than me, so I didn’t find the match difficult to control. I just had to maintain the pressure on him.”
That built on the win in the first singles, in which Lee Zii Jia had dealt similar treatment to Kenta Nishimoto. Malaysia nearly took the first men’s doubles as well, Aaron Chia/Soh Wooi Yik involved in a crackling encounter with Takuro Hoki/Yugo Kobayashi. The Malaysians almost stole the match from 14-19 down in the third, but the Japanese sneaked a win at the end to draw their team level.
Following Leong’s takedown of Watanabe, Goh Sze Fei/Nur Izzuddin staged a comeback after losing the opening game to Akira Koga/Taichi Saito. The Malaysians’ 18-21 21-15 21-12 win thus made redundant the last scheduled match, between Kento Momota and Justin Hoh.
In the top quarter, favourites China saw off defending champions India by the same margin.
India did stretch China in the first two matches, but Shi Yu Qi (against HS Prannoy) and Liang Wei Keng/Wang Chang (against Satwiksairaj Rankireddy/Chirag Shetty) stayed steady as the match wore on.
Lakshya Sen kept the challenge alive beating Li Shi Feng, but it was always going to be an uphill battle for the Indians in the second doubles, with scratch combination Dhruv Kapila/Sai Pratheek against He Ji Ting/Ren Xiang Yu. The match was the shortest of the tie, with the Chinese wrapping it up in 34 minutes.
What They Said
“He made a lot of unforced errors, while I made fewer errors, and that was positive for me. I’m happy I could handle the pressure and win a point for the team.” – Lee Zii Jia
“They are a very difficult pair to beat. We had to challenge them on every point. Fu Haifeng told us that the start of every game was going to be crucial, so we were focussed on that.” – Liang Wei Keng
“Whenever we played longer rallies, we were scoring points. It was a service-receive game, it was about dominating the first three-four strokes. If you want to beat them, you have to play at a much higher level that what we did today.” – Chirag Shetty
“When I was in there, I didn’t think about the situation we were in. I was just trying to take it to another game, and another match. We’ve been playing each other since our junior days. The conditions today were a bit tricky; the home crowd was pumped up.” – Lakshya Sen