Joko leads Indonesian attack in All England
Joko leads Indonesian attack in All England
BIRMINGHAM, England (Agencies): Joko Suprianto led Indonesia's four-pronged attack upon the All-England title to a clean sweep at the National Indoor Arena here yesterday.
Top-seeded Joko, who won the world title here three years ago, began his attempt at winning his first All-England title with a half-hour workout against Canada's Iain Sydie which ended in a 15-6,15-4 victory.
Joko's compatriot Hariyanto Arbi, the world champion, finished his match nearly ten minutes quicker, finishing off the rallies devastatingly with his famous smash in a 15-9, 15-7 win over little known Portuguese Fernando Silva.
Hariyanto, who is trying for his third All-England title in four years, is seeded only third, but looks a strong unofficial favorite on this form, perhaps motivated by the need to erase the memory of his shock loss to Denmark's Poul-Erik Hoyer-Larsen in last year's final.
There was a scare early on about defending champion Hoyer- Larsen who was suffering from a slight ankle injury. But as it turned out his first round opponent, Russia's Andrei Antropov, was ruled out of the tournament with an influenza virus.
Another former All-England champion from Indonesia, Ardy Wiranata, also made a winning start but found it much harder to do so. The 1992 winner came close to dropping the second game to the Danish doubles expert Thomas Sogaard, needing 54 minutes before a 15-9, 18-14 win earned him a second round with the Dutch number one Jeroen van Dijk.
Later the Olympic champion Alan Budikusuma joined the Indonesian advance. He won 15-5, 15-6 against Rajeev Bagga, the remarkably talented deaf-and-dumb former national champion from India.
The only seed to struggle on the opening morning of the world's oldest tournament was the Commonwealth champion from Malaysia, Rashid Sidek.
Sidek was unlucky to encounter so early on a resurgent former European junior champion from the Netherlands Chris Bruil, who is making a good comeback from injury and enterprisingly attacked his way to success in the first game before Sidek outlasted him 16-18, 15-5, 15-7.
Doubles
Earlier on the day, two Indonesian women's doubles teams strolled to the second round in style.
Finarsih and Lili Tampi needed 36 minutes to dispose of the UK double of Gillian Gowers and Sarah Handaker 15-8, 15-0. Gillian and Sarah were 9-1 behind Finarsih and Lili but they managed to scramble for more points before being stopped at 15-8 in the first set. In the second set, the English pair lost steam and were ruthlessly whipped 15-0.
In the other first round action, the Indonesian pair of Eliza and Riseu Rosalina reduced the partnership of Tammy Jenkins and Rhona Roleutson of New Zealand to a shambles with 15-3, 15-4.
Eliza was not teamed up with her usual partner, Zelin Resiana, who was injured.
Riseu is a mixed doubles specialist who is usually coupled with Flandy Limpele. However, they were denied entry because their names were not on the list of participants. The Badminton Association of Indonesia insisted, however, that it had registered their names.
Women's doubles coach Imelda Wiguna said that she was pleased with her proteges' performance. "As a warm-up, these result look okay," she said.
In the second round, Finarsih and Lili will have to face a daunting test in the form of China's top seeds Ge Fei and Gu Jun who breezed past Bulgaria's Tatiana Gerassimovitch and Vlada Tcherniavskaia 15-7, 15-8.
Eliza and Riseu will take on another Chinese pair, Qian Hong and Wang Li who ousted Andrea Dako and Adrienn Kocsis of Hungary.