CHINA LEAGUE Kicks off in Style

Top players had to struggle to put up a good match as they were worn out after travelling for the Thomas and Uber Cups. Meanwhile, having returned to represent their respective clubs in the tournament, they found it difficult to perform well with their “new” partners from their clubs.

National players present flying trapeze; head coach unhappy

While the Chinese national team players indulge themselves in the burning atmosphere of the Super League, they are still tied with the preparations for the World Championships, which will take place in August. Therefore, they had been boarding the domestic flight almost three times per week since, to return to train with the national team after each of their matches in Guangzhou.

Fu Haifeng, who was seen looking weary the night before the matches told the Daily news agency Sina, “I had to wake up at 6a.m to catch the morning flight to Guangzhou and started getting prepared just as I arrived at the stadium. I’m feeling very tired, especially since I’ve just returned from the Thomas Cup event. All this travelling will be more tiring now but it’s a rule set by the national team, so we still have to focus on our training with the team. It’s rather impossible for us to put all our energy into the league.”

Du Jing also indicated that the national team sees the World Championships as a very important event. “Therefore, all we can do is just to get used to this tempo of mass traveling.”

Li Yongbo, head coach of Chinese team recently stressed out that this new competition would strain his players with even more tight schedule and long hours of travel, enabling his top shuttlers to compete in International competition as the upcoming Li-Ning Super Series in Singapore.

The Battle of Waterloo for badminton Napoleons

The presence of world championship class players in the league doesn’t actually mean there would be a battle of high standard, especially when the doubles’ players were all scattered in eight different teams and forming scratch pairs with their new partners. Such condition was seen, for example, in the Qingdao team, where a mass of national players are from.

Being a pair of national team players, Fu Haifeng / Shen Ye played an acceptable match, but it was proved that not all national players are so. In the women’s singles match between Shanghai and Hubei, Wang Yihan, who was expected to play well, didn’t manage to live up to expectations as she lost 1-2 to Li Wen, who had once played in the national junior team.

On the contrary, playing for Hunan, Zheng Bo, who was sent back to the provincial team earlier this month, performed extremely well and had gained points for his team in the mixed doubles and men’s doubles events against Bayi.

Some top stars were seen in action when Bao Chunlai and Lin Dan confronted each other (photo), but Bao’s injury prevented to tall Chinese from playing the second match against his compatriot in the same tie.