Indonesia nipped by the Netherlands in Uber Cup

Zakki P. Hakim and Eva C. Komandjaja, Jakarta

Indonesia's young and inexperienced women failed to overcome their Dutch opponents, getting handed a 3-2 defeat in the last Group W match in the Uber Cup championship at the Bung Karno Indoor Stadium here on Sunday.

It was Indonesia's second straight defeat at the hands of the Dutch women. In 2002 in Guangzhou, it was the same result.

On Sunday, the host team was condemned to the bottom of their three-team group after the team suffered three losses in the singles matches which generally exposed the Indonesians' failure to press the pace while in the lead.

Silvi Antarini, Maria Kristin and Adrianti Fridasari, who have an average age of 19, battled hard before bowing out respectively to Yao Jie, Karina De Witt and Judith Meulendijks, whose average age is 27.

Playing as the first singles, Silvi duly stepped up her performance to reach a 7-2 lead in the first game, before Yao, born in China but a naturalized Dutch citizen, fought back to catch up.

After spotting Silvi, whose world ranking is 66 compared to Yao's 10, a five-point lead, Yao closed out the first game with a 9-2 run.

The second game appeared to go the other way with Yao racing to a 5-0 lead and Silvi battling back to force a third game.

Silvi looked to be cruising to a win with a formidable 7-1 lead, but Yao refused to sit back and clawed her way back to take the match.

Maria was the first to reach eight points in each of the games only to squander the lead and allow De Witt to lift her game to seal a 2-0 lead for Holland.

The home fans' hopes were raised again when Firdasari, the youngest team member at 18, displayed an attacking game against the 26-year-old Meulendijks.

Combining jump smashes with neatly placed drives, Firdasari took the first game 11-7. She was overwhelmed in the second game taking only two points.

The third game, nearly had a dramatic comeback. Trailing 1-8, the young Indonesian capitalized on Meulendijks' poor spell of form to make it 8-9.

But Meulendijks, who is ranked 26th to Firdasari's 116th, held off Firdasari's further lunge to seal a Dutch win with an unassailable 3-0 team score.

Indonesia reduced the margin with wins in the doubles.

Lilyana Natsir and Gresya Polii earned the hosts' first point by defeating De Witt and Brenda Beenhakker 15-5, 15-11, before Jo Novita and Lita Nurlita contributed the second point with a 17- 14, 15-13 win over Lotte Bruil-Jonathans and Meulendijks.

Meulendijks said that it was a difficult match, with the raucous crowd behind the host team. She said that her team was determined "to fight like hell."

Indonesian team manager Christian Hadinata said that his team had done its best.

"It's a pity that the singles failed to win us a point, but it was a fair experience for the girls," he said and hoped that the experience would help them improve for the next matches.