File photo of Adam and Alfred Lau.
KUCHING: The battle to secure spots in the Sarawak Sukma badminton squad will be a very intense affair with 102 shuttlers competing in the selection tournament at Sarawak Badminton Association (SBA) hall along Jalan Lapangan Terbang from tomorrow until Sunday.
They represent SBA and 13 other teams comprising Kuching Badminton Association, Miri Badminton Association, AB1M/Sarawak Bumiputera Badminton Association, training centres and academies.
According to SBA, out of the total number who have confirmed their participation, 20 are female players.
The SBA team is fielding 19 players, followed by Kuching Badminton Association with 15, Pacific Badminton Management with 13, while Miri Badminton Association (MBA) 2002 has nine and Kuching, eight players.
Other teams are Bintangor Badminton Association, Miri Badminton Centre, Chung Jing Sport, Chong Cheong Yong Training Centre, Pro Wira Sibu, Sibu Elite Badminton Training Centre, Thumb’s Up Badminton Academy and New Gen Badminton Team.
Categories to be competed are men’s and women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles.
The men’s singles competition has the biggest number of aspirants at 64 while there are 20 contesting the women’s singles.
Twins Adam Lau and Alfred Lau from SBA are the top two seeds in the men’s singles.
Their teammate Kourtney Kho Ker Yin is top seed in the women’s singles but she can expect stiff opposition from second seed Yong Ping Ping of MBA and joint third/fourth seeds Viviene Kua also of SBA and Kam Wei Li of MBA.
There are only 13 pairs in the women’s doubles competition while the men’s doubles competition attracted 34 pairs, with Alfred Lau and Adam Lau ranked as the top seeds.
Pacific Badminton Management is expected to mount a strong challenge by fielding four pairs, with Jeremy Kho-Jonathan Kho and Clement Chieng-Owen Ting as the joint third/fourth seeds.
The two other PBM representatives are Aloysius Lim-Douglas Lim and Gerald Ong-Wong Teck Chung.