Minions, Tai Run Aground – Day 2: HSBC BWF World Tour Finals
Long-running victory streaks came to an end in the evening session of the HSBC BWF World Tour Finals 2018 today with the losses of top seeds Tai Tzu Ying and Marcus Fernaldi Gideon/Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo.
· DEV SUKUMAR
Indonesia’s Gideon and Sukamuljo lost their first match to China’s Li Junhui/Liu Yuchen (featured image) in over three years, while Chinese Taipei’s Tai lost her first match to India’s Pusarla V Sindhu in over two years.
Indonesia’s ‘Minions’ had won all of their last eight matches to the current world champions; their only loss was in their first encounter more than three years ago. Today the Chinese had a grip on the proceedings from the start, keeping the Indonesians under attack through most of the 54-minute encounter. While Gideon and Sukamuljo did have their chances – notably in the second, when they shook off a spell of indifferent play to get more proactive and earn three game points – Li and Liu did well to absorb the pressure and play error-free badminton when it mattered, taking the match 21-18 24-22.
The Minions have to beat China’s Han Chengkai and Zhou Haodong tomorrow and hope Li and Liu beat Denmark’s Kim Astrup/Anders Skaarup Rasmussen to avoid the possibility of exiting the event on countback.