Malaysian badminton took a beating in last month’s Thomas & Uber Cup Finals in Bangkok, Thailand and Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) supremo Datuk Seri Norza Zakaria took full responsibility for Malaysia’s failures.
Within a month Malaysian badminton failed to achieve their target in two major meets. Apart from the failures in Bangkok, the nation also fell short of their three-gold target at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in April.
In Bangkok, the men’s team failed to achieve their semi-final target in the Thomas Cup after a 4-1 defeat to Indonesia in the quarter-finals while the women’s team flopped in the group stage and failed to make the quarter-finals in the Uber Cup.
In the Commonwealth Games, Malaysia failed to defend their mixed team gold and in the process failed to achieve the three-gold target. Malaysia won the gold in the men’s singles through Lee Chong Wei while Vivian Hoo partnered Chow Mei Kuan for the women’s doubles gold.
But Malaysia did achieve a fair amount of success under Norza and this was at the 2016 Rio Olympics where Malaysia reaped their best ever haul in the Olympics with three silvers – in the men’s singles (Chong Wei); men’s doubles (Goh V Shem-Tan Wee Kiong) and mixed doubles (Chan Peng Soon-Goh Liu Ying).
After the disaster in Bangkok, Norza rightly handed over the reins of BAM’s Coaching and Training (C&T) committee to BAM secretary Datuk Ng Chin Chai. Chin Chai, who was also the team manager in Bangkok, is not new to C&T as he was the chairman from 2010-2013.
In short, Norza has indirectly admitted that he was a failure. He has told Chin Chai that he should continue the “robust way of looking at the C&T, by being more hands-on with the coaches and players.” as quoted in local media.
A very wise move by Norza as he has finally realized that he has too much on his plate as he was recently also voted in as the new president of the Olympic Council of Malaysia. – BY RIZAL ABDULLAH
