Hosts Vietnam fail fans with early elimination from Asia badminton tourney

Hosts Vietnam have dashed the hopes of local fans’ after being eliminated from an Asian badminton championship in Ho Chi Minh City after only two matches.

Vietnam, Japan, Thailand and the Philippines were in Group C at the Robot Badminton Asia Mixed Team Championships 2017, running from February 14 to 19, where the underdog hosts hoped for at least one victory against the Filipinos.

The opportunity for a match against the Philippines never presented itself and local fans were left disheartened after their beloved team were easily defeated by their strong Thai and Japanese rivals, forcing them to bow out of the group stage.

The host team, consisting of star players Nguyen Tien Minh and Vu Thi Trang, were beaten 0-5 both in the opener with Thailand on Tuesday and their second group stage game with Japan the following day.

As per the championship’s rules, each match consists of five separate games, men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles.

Considerably poor performances by the Vietnamese squad led to a number of supporters leaving the Nguyen Du Sports Hall even before the matches ended.

Having lost two games in a row, the Vietnamese team were officially eliminated from the championship, regardless of the outcome of their last game against the Philippines on Thursday.

“Fairly speaking, the Vietnamese players did play well, having been comparable to their strong rivals in several sets,” Nguyen Phuong Nam, head of the championship’s organizing board, said.

“However, our players were still psychologically weak at decisive points in the matches, leading to their losses.”

Nam elaborated that while the Thai players “were totally confident and remained calm as they neared victory, the Vietnamese players were tense and failed to make decisive scores and settle the matches.”

During the men's doubles match against Thailand, the team drew 1-1 after the first two sets and Vietnam’s duo Bao Duc/Bao Minh were close to victory after taking a 21-20 lead in the tie-breaker.

“However, the Vietnamese were under tense psychological pressure and repeatedly committed service faults,” Nam said.

Similarly, Vu Thi Trang had taken a 15-12 lead in the first women’s singles set against Thailand’s Busana Ongbamrungphan but failed to settle the game. In the second set, Trang lost 18-21 after leading 15-10.

The biggest disappointment is Nguyen Tien Minh, Vietnam’s top player, who met Thailand’s Avihingsanon Suppanyu, ranked 42 places below him on the world’s tally in the men’s singles.

Minh made it to 20-18 in the first set but eventually lost 22-24. The Vietnamese star almost lost all of his power in the second set, leading his Thai opponent to quickly settle at 21-9, after which a number of saddened fans began to leave the venue.

“Avihingsanon Suppanyu is not really a strong rival, but Minh just failed to exhibit his true form,” Vietnam’s coach Nguyen The Huy commented.

The coach admitted that the psychological weakness is like “a chronic disease” for Vietnamese players at international championships.

“We apologize to our supporters, who pinned a lot of hope on their beloved players, only to see it shattered,” Huy said.

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