Internal ranking tournament to keep juniors competitive

The Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) wants its junior players to remain competitive despite their lack of participation in international competitions as a result of the global pandemic.

With this objective in mind, BAM is organising the Internal Ranking Junior Competition for their junior shuttlers at the Akademi Badminton Malaysia (ABM) from Aug 23-27.

Datuk Ng Chin Chai, Chairman of the Development Committee, explained that 59 national junior players will compete in three age-group categories – Under-18, Under-16 and Under-14.

“Such competitions will expose these players to competition-like conditions in addition to being an opportunity to gauge the performance of all the junior players.”

“This tournament is also crucial to the players to continue challenging and improve themselves after all their training. In fact, the tournament will be used to rank the players for selection and participation in international competitions around October and November in Europe,” Datuk Chin Chai said.

The players will be divided into several groups and will compete for slots in the playoffs which will be staged from August 30-31 and possibly places within the senior squad.

Datuk Chin Chai added that the players in the Under16 and Under-14 categories had reported in to the academy in late July and had been intensively training for the past few weeks.

Meanwhile, national junior, Muhd Fazriq Mohd Razif, is thrilled to be back in action since his last international competitions in Slovenia and Austria.

“The break made it tough on our fitness but the training here (ABM) helps us get back into shape. Although home-based, our coach monitored us through Zoom,” said Fazriq.

He admitted the internal tournament would be tough for him as his opponents were also his teammates and they all knew each other well but this did not mean he had given up.

“My teammates will surely produce their best to secure good results in their hunt for the slots to participate abroad.”

“I want to gauge my own progress against my teammates and will give it my best during this competition.”

For the record, this is a second internal junior ranking competition this year following the first in April.

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