It will be an all People’s Republic of China final in the mixed doubles after today’s semi-finals were won in impressive fashion by the teams from China. And in both cases the results can be called upsets, with higher seeded opponents beaten by the Chinese.
The first to suffer were former Olympic gold medalist Markis Kido and partner Pia Bernadeth (Indonesia), the brother and sister 3rd seeds were never really in the match, unable to find any rhythm against the impressive young Chinese combination of Yu Xiaoyu and Huan Xia, going down 21-15, 21-13.
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Bernadeth and Kido (INA) struggled to find their
rhythm against their more youthful opponents.
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“Our opposition had lots of experience on their side. We’re a lot younger so I think that’s why we overcame the challenges they gave us,” said Xiaoyu.
The more reserved Yu Xiaoyu and Huan Xia (CHN) belied an inner calmness in their all fluoro-pink uniforms. They took an early advantage and maintained a steady lead throughout the match.
“We had the right mindset for the match and stayed really cool whereas Kido and Bernadeth seemed to get frustrated. The match was actually easier than we expected. We learned from their moves and adapted our performance to match this during the games,” said Xiaoyu.
The pair plan to use this winning strategy of calmness in tomorrow’s final.
“We’ll just keep a cool mind like today and learn from the opposition tomorrow; we don’t know who that will be yet because their game’s still going,” said Xia. “We haven’t actually thought about the end result. We will just get every point we can and learn from every step along the way.”
They didn’t have long to wait to discover that it would indeed be their compatriots facing off in Sunday’s final, as Chen Qingchen and Zheng Si Wei (China) continued their giant killing run to progress to the final and make it an all-China affair, tipping out the top seeds Riky Widianto and Puspita Dili (Indonesia) in three games, 21-18, 20-22, 21-11.
The young Chinese pairing momentarily lost composure when at match point in the second game, losing three consecutive points, but returned in the decider to close out the match with some degree of comfort, again with their trademark shouting and encouragement to each other after most winning points.
“We were a bit rushed in the second game, the defence from the opponent in the second game was very good, at the end of the second game we were too rushed to win and lost some points, we settled down in the next game though,” said Zheng.
The Indonesians clearly lost focus in the third game, with Widianto picking up a yellow and then red card in quick succession for misconduct, losing a point and in effect any chance in the match at 10-17, not that it bothered the Chinese combination.
“We were not distracted by the cards to Riky, they were good for us and gave us a free point so we were happy.”
Of course they know their opponents game inside out and look forward to a great final on Sunday.
“We know Yu and Huan very well, we practice against them many times, it will be a good match. I think we can have the edge though but we must play our best.”
Source NZBadmintonOpen.com
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