Zii Jia eyes smashing awards night

PETALING JAYA: Can youngster Lee Zii Jia (pic) emulate Lee Chong Wei by winning an award at the Badminton World Federation (BWF)’s annual award ceremony night in Dubai today?

The 19-year-old singles shuttler has been nominated for the most promising player of the year – the Eddy Choong award.

The award ceremony is being held ahead of the World Superseries Finals starting on Wednesday at the Hamdan Sports Complex in the United Arab Emirates.

Zii Jia has shown steady progress this year by winning the Polish International Series title and reached the semi-finals of three Open tournaments – Thailand Masters, Taiwan Open and Bitburger Open in Germany.

He has been nominated alongside China’s Chen Yufei (women’s singles), India’s Satwiksairaj Rankireddy (men’s doubles, mixed doubles) and Indonesia’s Apriyani Rahayu (women’s doubles) and Gregoria Mariska Tunjung (women’s singles).

Yufei appears the frontrunner after winning a bronze at the World Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, in August.

She also reached the semi-finals of two Superseries in Japan and Denmark.

Last year, Chong Wei won under a different category when he bagged his fifth Player of the Year award.

The three-time Olympic Games silver medallist also won it in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013.

World No. 2 Chong Wei is not nominated this year.

The fight for the award will be among two singles players – the reigning world champion Viktor Axelsen (Denmark), K. Srikanth (India) – and doubles players Marcus Fernaldi Gideon-Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo (Indonesia) and Zheng Siwei (China).

Six women are vying for the Women Player of the Year. They are Chen Qingchen (China), Huang Yaqiong (China), Tai Tzu Ying (Taiwan), P.V. Sindhu (India), Akane Yamaguchi (Japan) and Lee So-hee (South Korea).