PETALING JAYA: Women’s doubles shuttlers Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah face a do-or-die mission in their last Group A match against Indonesia’s Apriyani Rahayu-Siti Fadia Ramadhanti in the Paris Olympics tomorrow.
Pearly-Thinaah need a big win against world No. 9 Apriyani-Siti Fadia to reach the quarter-finals at Adidas Arena in Port de la Chapelle.
The duo are likely to face another long gruelling and close encounter against Apriyani-Siti Fadia as they are locked 3-3 based on the head-to-head records.
The Indonesians have lost both their matches in the group so far against Chen Qingchen-Jia Yifan and Mayu Matsumoto-Wakana Nagahara and have no chance to reach the quarter-finals but don’t expect them to do any favour by giving the Malaysians an easy ride.
Thinaah knows it.
“We still have one more match, so we want to stay focused and just give 100 percent,” said Thinaah.
Thinaah and Pearly had a mixed fortunes in their opening two matches.
Yesterday, the world No. 13 fought brilliantly to topple Japan’s former two-time world champions Matsumoto-Nagahara 18-21, 21-15, 21-16 to reignite their hopes to making it to the last eight after losing narrowly to China’s world No. 1 Qingchen-Yifan a day earlier.
Pearly-Thinaah, who were making their debuts in the Olympics, were happy to come away with their first win in the competition but acknowledged that they still have work to do to go further.
“We are very excited after this win,” said Thinaah.
“We started with a loss but we did not want to think about yesterday’s match. We only wanted to take the positives and play like we have nothing to lose.”
Pearly-Thinaah knew they had to be ready to face three difficult matches after they were placed in the group of death.
“When we saw the draw, we knew all three matches were going to be tough but we want to give our best and the rest we leave it up to fate,” said Pearly.
“As long as we give everything on court and have no regrets, it’s enough for us.”
On their win over Matsumoto-Nagahara, Pearly said: “We changed our mindset in the second game. Patience was the key for us.
“From the first game when we were leading, I think we wanted to get some simple points and tried to extend our lead but this made things worse, so in the second game, we reminded each other to be more patient.
“We started to enjoy the rallies and this worked for us (in the second and third games).”
Malaysia last reached the women’s doubles quarter-finals through Woon Khe Wei and Vivian Hoo at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro edition.
Can the eight-year wait end next?
