After Solo disaster, can Malaysia still save its singles future?

Former coaches sound alarm over a broken development pipeline and warn of a widening gap in Malaysia’s junior singles ranks Kwan Yoke Meng said Malaysia’s failure stems from the lack of a structured, standardised system to develop junior singles players nationwide.

The Badminton Asia Junior Championships is a tournament organized by the Badminton Asia governing body to crown the best junior badminton players U19 in Asia. Note that this is different than the World Junior Championship U19.

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia’s dismal showing at the 2024 Asian Junior Championships in Solo, Indonesia, has sparked serious concern among former internationals and national coaches, who believe the issue goes far beyond just a few players underperforming.

The national juniors returned home empty-handed, failing to reach the podium in both the mixed team and individual events. While disappointing, former junior head coach Kwan Yoke Meng said the results should not overshadow the real problem: a lack of structure and direction in grooming young singles talent.

“It was a little unfortunate for the squads to return empty-handed, especially after doing well at the Dutch Junior, German Junior and Malaysian Junior International Challenge earlier this year. Perhaps they faced powerhouse China early on,” Yoke Meng told Scoop. “But the bigger concern is the singles department. Junior coaches must know how to spot strong singles players and not simply let them switch to doubles just because the player requests it.

“At the moment, we can see a significant gap between the junior doubles and singles players.” He added that Malaysia lacks a uniform and standardised junior programme like those used in countries such as Thailand, Chinese Taipei and Indonesia — where state and club-level systems follow a national blueprint.

“In China, for example, every state or region works towards the same national goal, like a technical handbook of a standardised programme. Here, we are too fragmented. “Worse still, we do not have enough junior tournaments. I’d say less than 10 a year. That is simply not enough when compared to our neighbours,” said Yoke Meng.

Wong Tat Meng, who watched the action live in Solo, echoed those concerns. The former national coach, who more recently worked with top independent shuttler Lee Zii Jia, described the performance of Malaysian singles players as “disappointing and quite sad”. “None of our boys or girls made it to the quarter-finals,” Tat Meng said in a social media post. “We clearly have talent, but something fundamental is not translating into international results. This has been going on for years.” He called for an honest review and a clear long-term direction, warning of a serious talent gap if issues are not addressed soon. “If we don’t fix this now, the singles department will fall even further behind,” he added.

Both coaches pointed out that many players who enter the national junior squad from state teams often still lack basic technique and match-readiness — a sign that grassroots coaching and competitions are not delivering what is needed.

It is crucial to note that the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) will only absorb junior players into the national junior squad once they reach the age of 16. Prior to that, they fall under the guidance of their respective states.

Yoke Meng and Tat Meng’s sentiments were shared by former international Stephanie Ng, who questioned the lack of ready successors for the current generation of senior players. “Most of our current seniors can play for one more Olympic cycle. But we have yet to identify juniors who can replace them in five years. We cannot wait until it’s too late,” Stephanie posted first, which triggered Tat Meng’s response.

As attention turns to rebuilding, the takeaway from Solo is clear — Malaysia needs more than just short-term fixes. It needs a system-wide rethink to revive the far more concerning nationwide sporting woes.

As for junior badminton, the World Junior Championships in Guwahati, Assam, India, will be the next immediate yardstick for the national squad.

Last year, Malaysia won one gold medal through boys’ doubles Aaron Tai and Kang Khai Xing, a silver in the girls’ doubles through Low Zi Yu and Dania Sofea Zaidi, and a bronze medal in the mixed team event. — July 28, 2025

Allianz Finals 2025

Kiera finally took home one grand slam title (Allianz Finals GSU15) this year after finishing runners up in both JET Finals and MSSM earlier in the year. Truth be told, this crown was made available to her due to the absence of top rank Low Zi Yu whom did not participate in the qualifying rounds. (Only two finalist from each of the 10 qualifying rounds were eligible to play in the finals.) Incidentally, for Kiera, both earlier grand slams titles were denied by Low Zi Yu herself winning both titles this year. In fact, Low Zi Yu already had achieved hatricks of grand slam titles not once but twice in 2002 and 2003, and she remained the only junior player who achieved such a remarkable feat.

Another point that cant be ignored was the clash with TID date which forced the pull out of half a dozen of top players in the U15 category. Be that as it may, the significance and status of Allianz Finals for the all age groups still gives it a memorable event and experience for the winners.

This title was achieved behind a hectic schedule of myriad tournaments Kiera had to participate in. Thanks to her coaches, they had worked on and kept her in good shape both physically and mentally throughout this long season. Even as we speak now, she has only one week to prepare for two back-to-back international tournaments and a Selangor Closed scheduled before the year come to an end of what would have been an incredible and fruitful year for Kiera.

Here is a preview of the Allianz Finals event in Kompleks Sukan Setiawangsa Kuala Lumpur.

The Star Report

Junior Badminton of India

BAI General Secretary Sanjay Mishra applauds the best-ever Asian Juniors medal haul, highlighting the federation's continued focus on nurturing young talent. He says,

"The performance of our junior shuttlers at the Asian Youth Championships undeline the success of our focused developmental programs. Over the past few years, we have worked deligently to build a robust pipeline through systematic training, consistent support and regular exposure through camps and competitions at the right levels. These milestone achievements are a testament to our vision of creating a strong foundation for future champions. The success at the World Junior Championships and Asian Youth Championships motivates us to continue strengthening the junior ecosystem and reaffirms that we are on the right path of talent and ecosystem development.:

Results of Badminton Asia U17 & U15 Junior Championship 2025

WS-U15 : Shaina Manimuthu (Champion)

MS-U17 : Jagsher Singh Khangurra (Semi-Finalist)

WS-U17 : Diksha Sudhakar (Champion)

WS-U17 : Lakshya Rajesh (Runner-up)

XD-U17 : Jangjeet Singh Kajla & Jananika Ramesh (Semi-Finalist)

Results of World Junior Championships U19

WS-U19 : Tanvi Sharma (Runner-up)

TRANSFORMATION PART 5

This is fifth and final part of the Transformation series.

D. Pre and Post match video reviews

When the tournament draw is out, we will be able to see who her opponents are. We will find videos (if available) to study her opponent’s game. Her coach can give pointers to strategize her game plan.

While in a match, Kiera wasn’t able to see herself how she played. With the video playback, she can see where she did good (reinforcement) and also where she could have done better (for improvements). Her coach can therefore, focus on areas that needed improvements.

After her match, we playback her match to analyse numerically by counting number of winners and errors. We discovered interesting statistics especially in doubles matches; who is playing well (low error counts + high winner counts) and who is having a bad day. The statistics doesn’t lie. One playing well doesn’t necessarily mean both will win the match. Both have to complement each other in the game. If a partner cannot compose her game temperament with high error counts, this will negate the winner counts and hence cost the match. More on this later.

E. Pre match warm ups on court

Often in the beginning of a tournament, especially first round matches scheduled early in the mornings, we can expect she may not be at her best. Kiera plays better when she has a pre match court warm ups just before her match. It is like she is playing her second set when she starts her match. Nothing too intense nor heavy, just variety of shuttle feeds movements to get her feel and rhythm going with the shuttle.

Usually if her match is in the later part of the day, we will look for nearby courts for this purpose. We time it just right after her court warm up, 30 – 45 mins before her match. It works well for her. Bigger international tournament venues have separate hall with additional courts for players to do warm ups. I see this in many western BWF super series tournament venues. This will definitely be helpful for the players.

However, if her match starts early in the morning, the best we can do is to do light drills, a day earlier. If she follows her club team for tournaments, her coaches will do some light workouts early, wherever they can find empty spaces near the hotel or court venue. Other than that, some rope skippings or hitting shuttle against the wall etc. will be helpful as well. That would be as best as can be done to prepare her warm-ups before her matches.

F. Mental Preparation and Visualisation

Perhaps one of the most important aspect but least “thought-up” is pre-match mental preparation. It may work differently for different players. Here are some but not exhaustive examples :

- Focus on tactical, strategies, executing quality of strokes and play. Playback previous videos that has, ie. winning rallies, winning game points etc.

- Have her to do mental visualisation, on court conditions, on previous matches that she did well, on specific rallies or moves/strokes which she played well and scored good points. This mental rehearsal I belief is a powerful tool to provide positive input into her sub-conscious mind. Hence boosting her confidence going into her match.

- Positive mental imagery has long been a key part of pre-game preparation for athletes. In fact, many successful players attribute their success to first visualizing a positive outcome. Visualization activates many of the same parts of the brain, and even the muscles, associated with the successful moves/action. It also boosts mindfulness and cognitive control, critical components of mental fitness.

- Having positive conversations and steer away from discussions that are otherwise. Get 3rd party validation. The belief and encouragement from coaches will boost confidence.

- When ever she has the “jitters” spend time to do other like listening to music and watch movies to get her mind off the stress of the coming big match. However, this needs to be supervised not to overspend long screen time on her device.

G. Win Error Video Analysis

This is an interesting post mortem on how a player and opponent performs in a match. During her 2025 MSSM U15 doubles preparation, her club coach advised her to play a supporting role to her partner. He saw that her partner was strong in the front court and advice Kiera to play to her partner’s strong areas. When we did the post-match win error analysis, we were surprised that Kiera played better as a supporting role rather than the initiator. The initiator or lead attacker takes more risk and hence likely to commit more errors as well as (but not necessarily) more winners. However, a supporting role will have lesser winner count as well as lesser error count. Kiera normally takes the initiator role in most of her doubles match hence her error counts were high. In this case, she could contain her error count but at the same time, able to win some winners. So it provide more stability for the pair.

I urge the readers to try this method of post-match analysis because it will assist the player to understand better why he/she plays better and like-wise. Wish to know more, you may pm me or leave your contact below for me to reach you so as I can share it with you.

This is the end of the 5-part Transformation series sharing since part 1 back in May 2024. I am happy to hear any comments if any and learn from the readers experiences and sharings as well.

Thank you for reading.

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. Nevertheless, Malaysia fared 1 better this year with 2 semifinalist in BSU17 (Lucas Lee) & BSU15 (Muhd Noor Hanafi) compared to last year with 1 semifinalist in XDU15 (Wong Tze Han / Chloe Leong) and 1 quarterfinalist in BSU15 (Ng Hao Tong).

Strangely, our contingent comprised of 44 strong players both girls and boys but were not represented in mixed doubles. Its really baffling.

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 for your views and leave the conclusions to you.

History of Champions count (by country) for all categories from 2006 to 2025 :

Number of Champions by country U15

Korea – 20

Japan – 14

Thailand – 13

Indonesia – 12

China – 7

India – 5

Malaysia – 4

Taiwan – 4

Hong Kong – 3

Singapore – 1



Number of Champions by country U17

Thailand – 17

Korea – 15

China – 14

Indonesia – 12

Taiwan – 9

Japan – 8

India – 3

Malaysia – 2

Hong Kong -2

Singapore - 2

BAC RANKING

Here is BAC GSU17 Ranking as at 26 Oct 2025 :

We are eternally grateful to the generosity of SKBA (and all the co-sponsors) for their Sports Kemp Scholarship which enable Kiera to achieve this results in Badminton Asia Continental level. We hope this will give her the impetus and catapult her further in the international scene next year.

CONTINENTAL JUNIOR BADMINTON CHAMPIONSHIPS

Here are additional information about Continental Junior Badminton Championship we ought to acquaint ourselves with.

1) As far as Junior tournaments are concern, BWF only recognise “World Junior Championship” (Individual and team events) for the U19 age group. For me, this is the biggest junior badminton tournament at world stage before the senior or professional level.

2) For younger age-groups such as U17 & U15 these are handled at continental or regional level rather than at global world-championship level. There are five continental junior badminton championships for U17 & U15. They are :

a) Asia - Badminton Asia Confederation (BAC),

b) Europe – Badminton Europe Confederation (BEC),

c) Pan America – Badminton Pan AM Confederation (BPAC),

d) Africa – Badminton Confederation of Africa (BCA),

e) Oceania- Badminton Oceania.

3) The Continental Junior Badminton Championships ranking points are not part of the official BWF junior world ranking (U19) system at all. Therefore it does not contribute to BWF World Junior (U19) Ranking points. At this moment, there is no global unified BWF ranking for U17 & U15, only at continental level.

4) Each continent maintains their own internal or development ranking points system for U17, & U15 levels. Each continent defines its own formula ranking points awards. Points cannot be transferred across continents or to BWF rankings. The total ranking is based on player’s best 6 results over 12 months.

5) The ranking points are used by national federation to seed junior players U17 & U15 or select them for continental tournaments and higher tier (U19) tournaments.

6) Players turning 18 – 19yo resets into the BWF Junior Ranking when they participates in BWF U19 tournaments. The ranking for U19 takes priority over the U17 & U15 ranking points.

Among the 5 continental junior championships, Badminton Asia’s system is the most competitive and heavily weighted. Even though the ranking scales are not universal, Badminton Asia U17 & U15 Championships are regarded as the strongest and highest level continental tournament for youth worldwide. Why?

a) Depth and density of talent. Top badminton nations (China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, India) compete here.

b) High level of play. Often equivalent to or higher than the U19 continental level in other regions.

c) National importance. Most Asian countries use results here for their national team selection, development and fundings/sponsorships.

d) Ranking weight (internal). Many national federations treat Asia U17 & U15 rankings higher than any European or Pan Am youth tournaments.

e) The Junior Badminton Championship hierarchy in terms of prestige are as follows (highest level first) :

- BWF World Junior Championship U19 (WJC)

- Badminton Asia Junior Championships U19 (BAJC)

- Badminton Asia Junior U17 & U15 Championships

- Junior International Challenge

- Junior International Series

- Asian Youth Games (AYG)

This is to say if your child is selected to play in the Badminton Asia Junior U17 & U15 Championships, this is equivalent to World Championship level for this junior age group.