Dear readers
It was great what Yuli did for her players by organising the matches with the different clubs.
The WA players met a lot of good competition and did WA proud with their games. The Malaysian club players are all very friendly. The players will have learned much from this experience.
The players also managed to get photos with former world champion Han Jian. Han Jian runs the Setia Badminton academy in KL.
In China he is nicknamed "sticky candy" (牛皮糖), owing to his much-used tactic of using long rallies to pressurize an opponent into making mistakes.
Han won the 1985 IBF World Championships, beating Morten Frost in the final. He also won a bronze medal at the 1983 IBF World Championships and played singles for China's world champion Thomas Cup (men's international) teams of 1982 and 1986.
To top off the experience, the players also got to meet Angie Yang's dad, Yang Yang. Yang Yang is of course a legendary badminton world champ. I even have rackets and shoes bearing his name.
He is one of the two badminton players in the world to have won two World Badminton Championships men's singles titles consecutively (1987, 1989), the other being Lin Dan.
Hopefully rubbing shoulders with these badminton legends will help our players. Of course, we only managed to meet these badminton greats because of Yuli Zheng's connections. Yuli is of course our very own world champion and I am pleased to know her on a personal basis but disappointed till now that she refuses to take me as a student.
The clubs that the WA players played included:
One Badminton Academy located at Ampang, Selangor.
VI Sport Club at Taman Periundustrial Tago.
Powerful Sports Club at Kepong.
Sting's club at Putrajaya.
Sentosa Sports Club at Sentosa Taman Seri.
Nusa Mahsuri Club.
It was great what Yuli did for her players by organising the matches with the different clubs.
The WA players met a lot of good competition and did WA proud with their games. The Malaysian club players are all very friendly. The players will have learned much from this experience.
The players also managed to get photos with former world champion Han Jian. Han Jian runs the Setia Badminton academy in KL.
In China he is nicknamed "sticky candy" (牛皮糖), owing to his much-used tactic of using long rallies to pressurize an opponent into making mistakes.
Han won the 1985 IBF World Championships, beating Morten Frost in the final. He also won a bronze medal at the 1983 IBF World Championships and played singles for China's world champion Thomas Cup (men's international) teams of 1982 and 1986.
To top off the experience, the players also got to meet Angie Yang's dad, Yang Yang. Yang Yang is of course a legendary badminton world champ. I even have rackets and shoes bearing his name.
He is one of the two badminton players in the world to have won two World Badminton Championships men's singles titles consecutively (1987, 1989), the other being Lin Dan.
Hopefully rubbing shoulders with these badminton legends will help our players. Of course, we only managed to meet these badminton greats because of Yuli Zheng's connections. Yuli is of course our very own world champion and I am pleased to know her on a personal basis but disappointed till now that she refuses to take me as a student.
The clubs that the WA players played included:
One Badminton Academy located at Ampang, Selangor.
VI Sport Club at Taman Periundustrial Tago.
Powerful Sports Club at Kepong.
Sting's club at Putrajaya.
Sentosa Sports Club at Sentosa Taman Seri.
Nusa Mahsuri Club.
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| Jasmine and her thosai. |
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| The fathers getting a pic with Han Jian. |
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| The WA Players with Han Jian. |
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| The players with legend Yang Yang. |
The icing on the cake was a dinner organised for Yuli and some of the players. The organiser was the WA state team sponsor Tan Sri Dr Khoo Kay Peng, the CEO of MUI Group which is a major public company in Malaysia owning Laura Ashley and the Corus Hotel chain.
Tan Sri organised a dinner at his company's Chinese restaurant at Corus Hotel which is located next to the Petronas Towers. His secretary even had name placings for all the boys and guests, Xiang, Jasper, Tyz and Jaz totally enjoyed the attention and the food in the presence of Tan Sri's body guards. It was so kind of him to take time off to organise the dinner for us and he was such great company. I am sure Tan Sri will continue to support the WA state team.
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| Tan Sri Dr Khoo with the boys. |
It was a sad day when the players finally said good bye to each other. We had enjoyed the fighting of the KL traffic and the challenges thrown in by the GPS system we were using. I am sure the players will relish the experience.
Special thanks must be sent to Lee Fah and husband KinMung. They were great for doing most of the organising for the trip. However, we could not do this without the support of the players' parents.
Till I blog again, good night.
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