Jakarta: Many Malaysian badminton fans took to social media urging World No. 4 Lee Zii Jia to appoint a coach after his Indonesia Masters second-round loss to World No. 18 Angus Ng Ka Long 21-16, 20-22, 13-21 on Thursday.
This was Lee’s third consecutive preliminary round loss of the last three weeks (round of 16 at the 2023 Indonesia Masters, round of 16 at the 2023 India Open, and first round at the 2023 Malaysia Open).
Besides Lee, another Malaysian men’s singles player, the World No. 28 Ng Tze Yong also crashed out in the second round by going down to Lakshya Sen from India 21-19, 8-21, 17-21 in 61 minutes.
That was Ng’s fourth defeat at the hands of Sen who had previously beaten him in the finals of the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, the 2022 Indian Open semi-finals, and the 2019 Bangladesh International Challenge quarter-finals.
In men’s doubles, Malaysia’s reigning men’s doubles World Champions – Aaron Chia/Soh Wooi Yik exacted sweet revenge for their defeat in last week’s India Open final by beating Liang Wei Keng/Wang Chang of China 22-20, 21-13, thus advancing to the quarter-finals.
Chia/Soh are scheduled to meet World No. 21 He Ji Ting/Zhou Hao Dong in the quarter-finals.
Two other Malaysian pairs – Goh Soon Huat/Shevon Jemie Lai (mixed doubles) and Pearly Tan/Thinaah Muralitharan (women’s doubles) have also advanced to the quarter-finals respectively. Goh/Lai will play Thom Gicquel/Delphine Delrue of France while Tan/Muralitharan will meet Li Wen Mei/Liu Xuan Xuan of China on Friday.
