Defending men’s champions Indonesia and defending women’s champions China are seeded only second for the E-Plus Badminton Asia Team Championships 2018 in Alor Setar, Kedah next month.
China are the top seeds in the men’s category with Indonesia second. Chinese Taipei are seeded third with Japan, runners-up at the last championships in Hyderabad, India seeded fourth.
The others in ranking order in the men’s team are India (fifth), South Korea (sixth) – both beaten in the semi-finals in Hyderabad – Malaysia (seventh) and Hong Kong China (eighth).
Japan, runners-up to China in Hyderabad, are the top seeds in the women’s category followed by China. Korea and Thailand who were losing semi-finalists in Hyderabad, are seeded third and fourth respectively followed by Chinese Taipei (fifth), India (sixth), Indonesia (seventh) and Malaysia (eighth).
The seeding calculation is based on the total Badminton World Federation (BWF) world ranking points accumulated from the top three singles players and the top two doubles players of each country for each category (Men’s and Women’s).
“The team with the most number of points is the top seed, the team with second highest number of points is seeded second,” said Kenny Goh, Badminton Asia’s Chief Executive Officer, adding that seedings were based on the world ranking seeding date as of January 11, 2018.
The E Plus Badminton Asia Team Championships will be held at the Sultan Abdul Halim Stadium in Alor Setar, Kedah from Feb 6-11.
Fifteen teams have confirmed their entries for the men’s category and 13 in the women’s category.
The E-Plus Badminton Asia Team Championships will also serve as the Continental Asia’s qualifying round for the Thomas Cup and Uber Cup Finals to be held at Bangkok’s Impact Arena.
The Asian Championships will be decided on three singles and two doubles in both the men’s and women’s categories.
The group stage will be decided on round robin format from Feb 6-8 with the top two teams from each group qualifying for knockout stage for the quarter-finals. The knockout stage will begin on Feb 9. The semi-finals will be played on Feb 10 and the finals on Feb 11.
Indonesia won the men’s title at the last championships with a hard fought 3-2 win over Japan in the final. In the semi-finals Japan beat South Korea 3-0 while Indonesia defeated India 3-1.
Badminton powerhouse China won the women’s title, defeating Japan 3-2 in the final. In the semi-finals China beat Korea 3-0 while Japan defeated Thailand also by a 3-0 margin. – BADMINTON ASIA
