SHAH ALAM: After effortlessly dispatching Dmitriy Panarin from Kazakhstan without breaking a sweat at the 2024 Badminton Asia Team Championships (BATC) today, Lee Zii Jia is prepared to confront a tougher challenge against Taiwanese shuttler, Lin Chun Yi, today.
In the Group B tie at the Setia City Convention Centre here, the nation’s professional men’s singles player ranked 10th in the world easily overcame Dmitriy 21-11, 21-10 in just 23 minutes to secure the first point for Malaysia.
However, Zii Jia, who was rested during the 5-0 victory in the opening tie against Brunei on Tuesday, acknowledged that a bigger challenge awaits in the final group tie against Taiwan if he and Chun Yi are fielded by their respective coaching staff.
Zii Jia, 25, who suffered a surprise defeat to Chun Yi in their last encounter in the second round of the 2023 Malaysia Masters last May, said he is ready to take on the world number 21 tomorrow, with their head-to-head record tied at 1-1. Zii Jia defeated him at the Indonesia Masters in January last year.
“Honestly, Chun Yi has shown good performance over the past two years; we can see how far the progress he has made. Definitely a tough match, so looking forward to tomorrow’s match.
“For my routine, I would go warm up (play easy match) first before tough match. On paper, both teams (Malaysia and Taiwan) are even, especially with (former men’s doubles world champions) Aaron Chia-Soh Wooi Yik, we have advantage,” he told reporters after his match.
Commenting on the development of male singles players in Taiwan, who are no longer solely reliant on Chou Tien Chen, Zii Jia said Malaysia have also shown improvement as the performances of Ng Tze Yong and Leong Jun Hao have been getting better, thus reducing dependence on him.
Meanwhile, Zii Jia explained that fans should not expect a sudden improvement in his performance after a 10-day training stint with the South Korean national squad recently.
“Indeed, it was only 10 days, not much improvement can be made. I went there to see something different.
“It is a good opportunity for me to learn something new like their culture and routine, that’s all. If you want to talk about skills, to say my performance suddenly improved (very much), it’s not likely,” he said. – BERNAMA
