PETALING JAYA: National men doubles shuttlers Yap Roy King-Wan Arif Wan Junaidi (pic) may be hurting, but they are itching for payback against India’s Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Chirag Shetty at the China Masters next week.
The Malaysian duo pushed the world No. 9 pair to the limit yesterday before narrowly falling 14-21, 22-20, 16-21 in a thrilling 64-minute quarter-final battle at the Hong Kong Coliseum in Kowloon.
Their fighting display proved they are not far off the standard of their Indian rivals. And they will get an immediate shot at revenge in the opening round in Shenzhen on Tuesday.
Roy King-Arif said they needed to tweak a few aspects of their game to have a better chance to beat the World Championships bronze medallists next week.
“In today’s (yesterday) match, some of our shots lacked quality and we were not consistent enough,” lamented Arif in a post-match interview with the Badminton World Federation (BWF).
“We made it easy for our opponents to attack us. They are more experienced and were steadier. We are not satisfied with our overall performance. We are still making simple mistakes.
“We will meet them again in the China Masters first round and we hope it will be a different outcome,” added Arif.
Roy King said: “We were too nervous in the first game. If we had enjoyed the game more and played with more freely, we could have won. So, this is something we need to learn from.”
Despite the defeat, Roy King-Arif showed that they were capable of overcoming the world’s top pairs when they toppled Denmark’s world No. 4 Kim Astrup-Anders Skaarup Rasmussen in the first round.
The youngsters were also the only Malaysians in the men’s doubles to make it into the last eight in the competition.
Against Rankireddy-Shetty, Roy King-Arif showed how much they have improved after losing tamely 7-21, 14-21 to the former in their sole encounter previously in the Thailand Open quarter-finals last year.
They are now looking forward to causing the Indians more trouble in China.
