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Reigning Champions Indonesia to Meet China in Finals
Indonesian Marleve Mainaky proved to be of more mental toughness when he sealed a 3-2 semi- final victory over Denmark on Friday for the reigning champions to set up a Thomas Cup championship meeting with China.
Indonesia, who won their fourth consecutive tie in the tournament, are seeking for their fourth straight title and 12th overall in the Thomas Cup, the men's team badminton championships. Hendrawan almost turned the most dramatic tie of the tournament into another easy sweep of Indonesia before his first singles rival Peter Gade Christensen saved a match point to put Denmark 1-0 with a 12-15, 17-16, 15-11 victory.
The 27-year-old veteran served for the match on 16-15 at the second set, but his world number one opponent Christensen saved the match point with a smash on the net to turn the table around. The Dane, who won the world championship in 1999, was apparently on the upper hand in the third set after building up an early lead before Hendrawan saved two match points at 14-9. But Christensen, 23, who was more powerful and faster due to his youth, held off the final resistance to win the game on the third match point. The first doulbes game was not a matchup as expected with Tony Gunawan and Rexy Mainaky leveled the tie score 1-1, beating Martin Lundgaard/Lars Paaske, 15-7, 15-3. When the 19-year-old Taufik Hidayat took on the Olympic champion Poul-Erik Hoyer-Larsen, it was completely the other way around of the first singles face-off. The younger Hidayat lobbed Hoyer-Larsen around of the court and stretched the 34-year-old veteran to the utmost before taking the critical third game, 15-11, 15-9.
But the game was concluded in an embarrassing way when the Indonesian celebrated his victory by throwing his racket to the air. The racket fell under the feet of Hoyer-Larsen, who kicked it away in anger. Hoyer-Larsen did not picked the racket back to Hidayat, who starred in unbelief for the unprofessional behaviour, before he left the court among the boos of the audiences.
As the Malaysian police were taking away illegal Indonesian immigrates on the stands, their second doubles players were suffering the biggest upset of the competition on the court. Candra Wijaya paired with Sigit Budiarto first time in the competition after seperated for two years, but they failed to prove their strength when Jesper Larsen and Jens Eriksen snatched a successful comeback win, 8-15, 17-15, 17-16 to extend the tie to the fifth game. Re-unioned first time after Budiarto was banned for a year following a failure of a doping test in 1998, the former world champions and world No.1 doubles players seemed to cruise for a conclusion when Budiarto made an unusual save under between his legs for a 15-8 win of the first set and led 10- 5 in the second.
But the consistent Danes gave the honour to the European champions by a 17-15 second-set win after the Indonesians wasted three matches points and two services at 14-11. Larsen and Eriksen rocketed to a 9-1 lead in the decisive set of the tie before the Indonesians came up.
Wijaya and Budiarto employed their fast paces and quick touches on the net, mixed with straight backhanders from baseline, to catch up the Danes everywhere on the court. The rivalry was tied on every points since 11-11 before Larsen and Eriksen saved two match points again at 16 to all, to draw a dramatic a 2-2 tie on their first serve.
Danish coach Kenneth Larsen said, "It's an incredible match. I 'm proud and excited for what my players had put into the game. "We were close to win the semifinal on the third singles, but I'm satiesfied with my players as they had done anything they could. It's an extremely brilliant game.
"I'm happy with my players because our goal of the competition was to get into the semi-finals in both Cups."
Indonesian coach Sumaryono Hadi Nasri said: "We're lucky to win the semifinal because my players did not deliver the best they have. We'll be a better team in the finals on Sunday."
Both coaches agreed that the chance to win the tie was 50-50 to both sides when it was leveled at 2-2.
"Both players (of the third singles) played much below to their normal levels in the match, because they were too nervous," said Larsen.
Nasri delinced to give any clues for their finals lineup. "It depends on our strategy (whether we will change the doubles pairings in the finals)," said Nasri.
Larsen said Hoyer-Larsen would retire after the Sydney Olympic Games. "He will retire after the Olympics, but you cannot count him out now because he played very tough in the tournament," Larsen added.
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