Beijing: China has named its Thomas & Uber Cup teams for the upcoming BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals which will be held in Bangkok, Thailand from May 20-27.
As usual, China has the strongest men’s singles line-up amongst all other teams, containing the Rio Olympic champion Chen Long, two-time Olympic gold medalist Lin Dan and the reigning All England champion Shi Yuqi, plus Qiao Bin as the backup men’s singles shuttler.
The men’s doubles list consists of world number three Liu Cheng/Zhang Nan, world number four Li Junhui/Liu Yucheng, and Zheng Siwei and Wang Yilyu. Liu Cheng/Zhang Nan and Li Junhui/Liu Yucheng were able to advance to the semifinals of the 2018 Asian Championships that was held in Wuhan last Saturday.
As for the China Uber Cup team, in addition to Chen Yufei, He Bingjiao and Gao Fangjie, the 2012 London Olympic champion Li Xuerui was also being added to the China women’s team.
“We included Li Xuerui to the team because the China women’s team lacks player who has experience in huge tournament like this. Li showed that she’s slowly back to her top form when she defeated many players to win the Lingshui China Masters few weeks ago,” said China’s head coach Xia Xuanze.
“Furthermore, Li was able to beat higher ranked teammates during training,” added Xia.
World No. 1 pair, Chen Qingchen/Jia Yifan will lead the Chinese team in the women’s doubles division together with Tang Jinhua/Huang Yaqiong and Huang Dongping/Zheng Yu.
China has been drawn into Group A in the Thomas Cup, alongside India, Australia and France while the Uber cup team has been grouped with Indonesia, France and Malaysia in Group D.
