All England Championships 2019: With favourites battling injuries and loss of form, first wide-open competition in years

In all its 120 years of competition, the All England Championships, still venerated as the world’s most prestigious badminton tournament, would rarely have seemed so open as it does in its 2019 edition.

Ordinarily dominated by a couple of players who have made the coveted singles titles their own private preserve, this year’s BWF World Tour Super 1000 event at the Arena Birmingham appears unlikely to throw up any certainties for the winners’ rostrum. Riddled by injuries and temporary loss of form in the face of fierce, unrelenting competition in a punishing and crowded schedule, most of the top players appear pale imitations of their normal imposing selves.

The biggest example of this is the top seed in the women’s event, Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei, who has been winning the title for the past two years, and will be going for the hat-trick by the time the $1 million prize money tournament attains its conclusion on the forthcoming Sunday.

The 24-year-old Taiwanese had bagged the All England crown in 2017 by defeating Thailand’s 2013 world champion, Ratchanok Intanon, at 21-16, 22-20; and then consolidated her World No 1 ranking the following year by beating Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi by a 22-20, 21-13 scoreline.

Although she technically remains a favourite to take the title this year as well, Tai has been plagued in recent months by muscular injuries that have slowed her down and prevented her from playing her artistic, deceptive strokes from a position where she is in full control of the rally. The chagrin of reaching the shuttle a split-second later than she normally does has translated into clumps of unforced errors that have caused her to suffer defeat at the hands of lesser players in recent months.

The defeat that would have been hardest to swallow was the loss in three games to India’s PV Sindhu at the round-robin group stage of the year-ending World Tour Grand Finals in Guangzhou, last December. The 14-21, 21-16, 21-18 loss to the 23-year-old Indian had come despite the Taiwanese carrying a 10-3 lead in their career head-to-head meetings, and despite the fact that, at the time, she had already spent 105 weeks ranked as the world’s pre-eminent woman player.

Earlier this year, she suffered an even more humiliating loss at the Malaysia Masters by a 13-21, 14-21 margin at the hands of her old nemesis, Intanon, whom she trails 10-13 in career meetings. Tai clearly does not relish playing against someone cast in her own deceptive mould, and the Thai remains one of the very few players against whom the Taipei star has a negative record.

To her credit, Tai has refrained from whining to the media about the injuries that she has appeared to carry since November of last year; and simply skipped the Indonesia Masters that came hard on the heels of its predecessor in Malaysia. Six weeks after the end of her challenge in Jakarta, Tai should ordinarily have recovered from any muscular strain, although injury to joints do take longer to heal.

There is thus no way of knowing just how well Tai is playing at the moment, but the Taiwanese should be able to ease into the tournament, with her initial round against Canadian Michelle Li being relatively easy on the back of a decisive 5-1 head-to-head record, with wins in their five most recent meetings.

Nor should her projected second round clash with either American Beiwen Zhang (against whom she has a 5-2 record) or Thailand’s Nitchaon Jindapol (a runaway 7-1 record) cause her furrowed brows. An expected quarter-final joust against India’s Saina Nehwal will also not give Tai sleepless nights, for she has a 14-5 record against the Indian, with wins in their last dozen meetings in an unbroken reel.

Tai’s first real test is expected to come in the semi-final, when she runs into either Japan’s fourth-seeded Akane Yamaguchi or China’s No 6 seed, He Bingjiao. The Taiwanese is deadlocked 7-7 against Yamaguchi, with losses to the Japanese in their most recent two meetings — at the October 2018 French Open, and then the World Tour finals in Guangzhou. Of course, if Bingjiao manages to tame Yamaguchi in their expected quarter-final, she would clear the way for Tai, who owns a 7-2 career head-to-head advantage over the Chinese southpaw.

The lower half of the draw is crowded with players of the calibre of Japan’s No 2 seed and 2016 All England champion, Nozomi Okuhara, China’s No 3 seed, Chen Yufei, India’s fifth-seeded Sindhu and Thailand’s seventh-seeded Intanon vying amongst themselves to barge into the title round. Intanon has been particularly impressive of late, narrowly losing the German Open crown to Yamaguchi last Sunday at 25-23 in the deciding game of a hugely entertaining final.

The other stellar German Open singles final, however, failed to live up to expectations, as Japan’s reigning world champion, Kento Momota, demolished the challenge of compatriot and Thomas Cup teammate, Kenta Nishimoto, with minimal fuss. In the process, the left-handed World No 1 gained sweet revenge for his narrow reverse at the hands of Nishimoto at the Malaysia Masters in January this year.

Like Tai, Momota had seemed well-nigh invincible by the mid-year mark in 2018, and had stamped his class on the World Championships in Nanjing by bagging the men’s singles crown, becoming the first male player from his country to do so. But then, he suffered a mental meltdown in the summit clash of the World Tour Grand Finals, losing abjectly at 12-21, 11-21 to China’s Shi Yuqi, who himself had been fortunate to make the title round after needing to save a match-point against India’s Sameer Verma the previous day.

In the two Masters tournaments in South-East Asia, Momota further blotted his copybook by losing to Nishimoto in Kuala Lumpur, and to up-and-coming Dane, Anders Antonsen, in Jakarta the following week. These three defeats in a two-month span exposed his vulnerability and somewhat reduced speed in the face of a left knee that he had jarred in January this year. But his German Open win showed him to be back at his fluent best, with smooth, economical movements and perfect positioning.

Of the three players that Momota has lost to since December 2018, it is Shi, the defending champion and second seed at this All England, who poses the biggest threat to the Japanese southpaw’s campaign. The 22-year-old Chinese, widely considered to be his country’s heir-apparent to the mantle of the fast-fading Lin Dan and 2016 Olympic gold medallist Chen Long, has contested the last two All England finals, losing to Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei in the 2017 gold medal clash, and beating Super Dan in three games in last year’s title round.

Before their projected clash in the final, the top two seeds at Birmingham will each have to wade through a minefield containing some exciting players. Shi faces a really tricky opening round against the fiercely ambitious Antonsen, will then run into the winner of the match between Malaysian Daren Liew and Thailand’s Suppanyu Avihingsanon, before he faces a potential quarter-final against the Olympic bronze medallist, South Korean stonewaller Son Wan Ho.

If Shi makes it safely through to the semi-final, he will most likely face the winner of the projected quarter-final between two former world champions — Chen Long, who won the world title in 2014 and 2015, and Viktor Axelsen, who pocketed it in 2017.

In recent tournaments, and after a mostly barren 2017-18 period, Chen has looked much more like the player who was undisputed numero uno in the three years before the 2016 Rio Olympics. Axelsen also seems to have finally recovered from the ankle surgery that kept him off the courts for several months in the closing stages of last year. He also appears to have come to terms with the troublesome 1.15-metre service rule that makes him crouch comically when employing the short serve.

Any one amongst Shi, Chen, Axelsen and the unseeded veteran legend, Lin Dan, could come through the seething cauldron that is the bottom half of the men’s singles draw, to take on one amongst Momota, Chinese Taipei’s Chou Tien Chen (seeded No 3) India’s Kidambi Srikanth (seeded seventh), plus Indonesians Anthony Sinisuka Ginting (the No 8 seed) and dangerous floater Jonatan Christie, for a spot in the final.

For those who would be interested in a flutter on the eventual outcome of this string of bouts, some sage advice would be to put their shirt on a rank outsider, a dark horse or filly at long odds, that would gallop gracefully past the finishing post!