Kuala Lumpur: The Badminton Association of Malaysia has announced on Saturday that Hendrawan will continue to serve as Malaysia’s men’s singles coach until his contract expires after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The president of BAM, Norza Zakaria said that Hendrawan has been tasked to cultivate Lee Zii Jia, Soong Joo Ven, Lim Chong King and Cheam June Wei to be the successors of Lee Chong Wei.
In addition, Hendrawan’s current priority would be to guide four players above to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The 47-year-old former World Champion from Indonesia started his coaching career with BAM in 2009, where he was responsible to coach the Malaysian junior team.
He became Lee Chong Wei’s coach since 2015 and was able to help Lee launching a successful comeback that saw him regain World No. 1 rankings in less than a year after the doping incident.
Meanwhile, BAM’s chief men’s singles coach Misbun Sidek, assisted by another Indonesian Indra Wijaya, will continue developing players such as Leong Jun Hao, Tan Jia Wei, and Aidil Soleh and turn them into world-beaters, while also building depth and unearthing new talent for Malaysia.
“In addition to some of the players who already belonged to the national team, Misbun was also given the task of finding new talents. Hendrawan’s expertise is very valuable to us. Hendrawan will apply the training tactics he was using on Lee Chong Wei to those four players,” said Zakaria.
Zakaria also told reporters that the current Chief Operating Officer at Badminton Asia, Kenny Goh will return to BAM to become the Secretary-General of the organization.
Kenny Goh had previously served as general manager of BAM before moving to Badminton Asia.