BAM still have faith in Misbun

KUALA LUMPUR: The Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) are keeping faith in youth development director Datuk Misbun Sidek despite a dismal outing by the juniors at the 2022 BWF World Junior Championships in Santander, Spain.

BAM secretary-general Datuk Kenny Goh, however, said Misbun needs to lay out a structured plan as quickly as he can to beef up the coaching department and training programme for the juniors.

"Of course he will do a very thorough post-mortem himself and see what areas that he needs to improve on.

"We'll give him the opportunity on what he needs to do. He has to sit down with all the relevant bodies including sports science people as well as administrators and come out with a structure," he told reporters when met at a training session here today.

For the first time ever, none of the national shuttlers qualified for the quarter-finals in individual events while the squad finished only ninth in the mixed team event of the world junior meet.

The 2019 edition in Kazan, Russia was the only time when the Malaysian squad returned home empty- handed.

Meanwhile, Kenny said professional players needed to prove their mettle in tournaments before they could be invited to train with the national team at Akademi Badminton Malaysia (ABM) in Bukit Kiara here.

"We have dropped players before but after a while if they showed potential we took them back," he said.

BAM high performance director Dr Tim Jones had said a decision on whether to allow professional players to train with the national squad at ABM was expected to be announced soon.

On another matter, Kenny said players who would be representing the country in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) World Tour Finals from Dec 14-18 in Guangzhou would have to quarantine in Bangkok, Thailand, for three days before entering China.

However, he said BAM would make a final decision on whether to send players to the world tour finals after the BWF council meeting here this week.

World men's doubles champions Aaron Chia/Soh Wooi Yik and women's doubles pair Pearly Tan/M. Thinaah are the BAM players who have qualified for the finals.

-- BERNAMA