Post Chengdu Trip Musings

The Badminton Asia U17 & U15 Junior Championship in Chengdu, China is an ideal reward / next destination international tournament for top achievers nationally (from the JET Finals / MSSM) because this is the highest continental level tournament for this junior age category. Therefore, BAM did good by sending selected top U15 & U17 juniors in the country to this event which is commendable and absolutely the right thing to do. All the other 15 Asian countries would have undergone the same process internally and therefore the final participation list would be considered the cream of the Asian Juniors (if not the world), which makes this event so prestigious.

Be that as it may, there were some areas in the approach to this event I feel ought to be thought over for further improvement.

I can see the intentions of ABM is to measure where our selected juniors stand in the midst of the top juniors from other Asian countries and rightfully so, as this is an ideal platform for this purpose. However, I still think we could give our juniors a little more mileage going into this event with better preparation, provide more motivation and develop camaraderie in the group.

As I understand, the mix of our juniors comprises of ABM juniors and non-ABM juniors. It is visibly apparent there is a divide within the team. I would have preferred that the senior players (those whom have been to this event before the previous years) to guide the first time participants and mentor them, sharing experiences on court conditions, managing the cold climate, their playing experiences offering tips and tactical tricks etc.

I am not sure if there were any communications of expectations and targets to be achieved but I think this has not been emphasised enough.

Prior to the trip, there were minimal or no centralised training planned. I think I can understand the constraints ABM were facing with shortages of coaches, tight schedules due to the demands of other international events to attend. As the result, they had to make good with whatever resources they have. This year, they had to call in other state BA coaches to assist in this trip. It was just a shame, had we been more cohesive as a team (like preparing for a team event), we could bring the best out of our juniors and perhaps see more podium winners.

Finally, I feel there were lack of vested interest from the top management, understandably since it is only U15 & U17 junior event with little stake in it to be justified for top attention. Nevertheless, at the very least, there should be an individual players review / post mortem on their performances. After-all these were supposed to be the top juniors from our country.

A check in Wikipedia from the history of this event, we can see scant Malaysian juniors Champions but sadly most have transitioned to the senior team poorly :

2011 – Boys U15 doubles : Tan Jia Wei / Ooi Zi Heng

2014 – Boys U15 doubles : Chia Wei Jie / Chang Yee Jun

2017 – Boys U15 doubles : Fazriq Razif / Ong Zhen Yi

2018 – Boys U15 doubles : Fazriq Razif / Justin Hoh

2018 – Boys U17 doubles : Demond Anthony Samin / Junaidi Arif

2019 – Boys U17 singles : Justin Hoh

Already we can see other Asian juniors development has clearly surpass us since this Competition started in 2006. Note that we have non girls Champion todate. I have compiled the statistics below and leave the conclusions to you.
History of Champions count (by nations) for all categories from 2006 to 2025 :

Number of Champions by nations U15

Korea – 20

Japan – 12

Thailand – 13

Indonesia – 12

China – 7

India – 5

Malaysia – 4

Taiwan – 4

Hong Kong – 3

Singapore – 1

Number of Champions by nations U17

Thailand – 17

Korea – 15

China – 14

Indonesia – 12

Taiwan – 9

Japan – 8

India – 3

Malaysia – 2

Hong Kong -2

Singapore - 2