James says study must be made to see why juniors flop

PETALING JAYA: Find ways to improve the standard of the second echelon of shuttlers.

This is the call made by former international Datuk James Selvaraj after youngsters Beh Chun Menggoh Boon Zhe went down with a whimper 11-21, 13-21 to China’s Chen Boyang-liu Yi in the men’s doubles final of the Malaysian International Series at the Arena Badminton Perak in Ipoh yesterday.

Their loss marked the hosts’ worst-ever performance in the tournament since its inception in 2017 as there were at least two winners in each of the first three editions leading to 2019.

The competition was not held in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The players, who had taken part were a combination of those from the junior and senior back-up squads.

James, who is the current Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) coaching and training committee member, has called for a thorough analysis of the players’ performances after the disappointing outing.

“The players have been training very hard and the coaches are doing their jobs. But the problem is the players are not performing well not just in this tournament but also in the recent World Junior Championships where no one managed to even enter the quarter-finals,” said James.

“So, clearly something is not right. I feel that a thorough analysis need to be done to find out what exactly is going wrong.

“I feel that our high performance director Dr Tim Jones has to look into the mental and physiological aspects of the players.

“He has the experience in sports science and needs to try to understand what is happening to the players. Maybe he should try talking to them to find out what is going wrong. Hopefully, the situation will get better after this,” said James.