Hong Kong badminton stars get tough draw in Asia Mixed Team Championships

“Our players will then have to make extra effort in the remaining qualifying events to make up for the loss of not playing in the Sudirman Cup. That may give them a difficult start in the qualifiers.”

This month’s team event features five matches in a tie, two singles, men’s and women’s, two doubles and the mixed doubles.

“Our overall team strengthen is not as strong as Japan and Taiwan, especially in the women’s singles and men’s doubles,” He said. “If we want to qualify for the last eight in the knockout stage, we must beat one of the two seeded teams, Japan or Taiwan, but that is not easy.”

The teams are seeded according to their best-ranked players or teams in all five events by January 17, with Japan seeded first in the group, followed by Taiwan. The three other top seeds are China in Group A, Malaysia in Group B and Indonesia in Group C. The two best teams across four groups will advance to the quarter-finals.

At the 2019 event, hosts Hong Kong beat Taiwan 3-2 in the quarter-finals at Queen Elizabeth Stadium to reach the last four, but the visitors were without their two top players – Chou Tien-Chen, now world No 5 in the men’s singles and Tai Tzu-ying, currently world No 3 in the women’s.

Hong Kong’s current highest men’s singles is Angus Ng Ka-long, the world number 18, while Yeung Sum-yee is the highest-ranked women at 110th.

The tournament will open with group matches on February 14, to be followed by the knockout stage.

Elsewhere, Lee Cheuk-yiu advanced to the quarter-finals in the Thailand Masters after struggling to beat Kiran George of India 2-1 in Bangkok on Thursday. The third seed saved a match point when he was down 20-19 in the third game before coming back to win 20-22, 21-15, 22-20.

He faces a tough test next against Shi Yuqi of China in the last eight, after Shi beat Koki Watanabe of Japan 21-18, 12-21, 21-12 in another second round match.