RI men's duo win All-England C'ship
RI men's duo win All-England C'ship
Agence France-Presse, Birmingham, England
Indonesian pair of Sigit Budiarto and Candra Wijaya won the men's
doubles title at the All-England championships after dominating
Lee Dong-soo/Yoo Yong-sung of South Korea in the final here on
Sunday.
Sigit/Candra won 15-7, 15-5, which proved to be Indonesia's
only victory at the tournament.
Meanwhile, Muhammad Hafiz Hashim caused one of the biggest
shocks in the 104-year history of the tournament when he upset
the top-seeded titleholder Chen Hong to win the men's singles
title.
Hafiz's 17-14, 15-10 win made him the first Malaysian for 37
years and the first unseeded player for 15 to win the title, and
ended Chinese hopes of equaling their own open era record of
winning four of the five titles.
It completed what had already been a remarkable tournament for
the 20-year-old from Kelantan, who had previously beaten two
other seeds and now avenged his elder brother Muhammad Roslin
Hashim's defeat in the semifinals the day before.
"This is a revenge for my brother's loss and my next target is
to win he world championships," said Hafiz.
Malaysian coach Yap Kim Hock, a former All-England finalist,
added: "The All-England means a tremendous amount to us. This is
a huge thing for Malaysian badminton."
The last Malaysian to win the men's singles title was Tan Aik
Huang in 1966. It followed Hafiz' achievement in winning the
Commonwealth Games title in Manchester last August.
Hafiz achieved his success by playing as many of the rallies
in mid-court and at the net as possible, thus increasingly
nullifying Chen's spectacularly dangerous airborne attacks.
Hafiz was at least Chen's equal in the flat fast mid-court
exchanges and also picked off winners at the net well. But even
when forced to defense against Chen's steep smashes, Hafiz often
did remarkable things, once producing a block from behind his
back and once between his legs.
The key moments came after Hafiz had saved a third game point
at 12-14, and pushed on to 14-14. That set up a surge of
adrenalin which carried him on a run of six winning rallies and
changed the course of the match. In the second game Hafiz moved
ahead from 2-2 to 5-2 and after getting to 11-6 and 14-8 proved
mentally strong enough to fight off mini-revivals from Chen which
got the champion back to 8-11 and 10-14.
Earlier Zhang Jun and Gao Ling captured the mixed doubles
title with a 11-6, 11-7 win over their compatriots Chen Qiqiu and
Zhao Tingting. That enabled Zhang and Gao to complete a hat-trick
of major titles, having already won the Olympic Games in Sydney
in 2000 and the world championships in Seville in 2001.
China was already certain of three All-England titles before
the final day began, having provided all the finalists for the
women's singles and doubles and the mixed doubles.