World C’ships: Pearly-Thinaah Do Malaysia Proud Despite Finishing Runners-Up

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 31 (Bernama) -- National women’s doubles pair Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah can walk with their head held high after putting on a fighting display en route to finishing as runners-up in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) World Championships in Paris tonight.

In the final at the Adidas Arena, world number two Pearly-Thinaah even tried switching their game around after a first-game loss but China’s world number one of Liu Sheng Shu-Tan Ning proved a tough nut to crack as the Malaysians lost 14-21, 22-20, 17-21 after battling for an hour and 23 minutes.

The Malaysians threw everything but the kitchen sink at them, and yet still came up short.

So, credit to Pearly-Thinah for their courage, determination and heart.

In fact, this is still a proud - and historic - achievement because Pearly-Thinaah became the first national women’s doubles pair to have reached the final of the World Championships, thus exceeding their previous best of a quarter-final appearance at the 2023 edition.

Thinaah said they were really happy to have made the final at the World Championships. 

“But definitely a little bit disappointed that we couldn't walk away with the title. But then, I also have to give credit to our opponents - they played really well, put us under pressure, and stayed very calm when executing their shots. 

“I think that’s something we definitely can learn from them. But yeah, overall, I think it's been a good week here,” she said in a BWF audio clip recording. 

Thinaah said that they also went into the match with a mindset of not wanting to give away easy points to their opponents and that as long as the shuttle didn’t hit the ground, they would always fight for every point. 

And that, they sure did!

-- BERNAMA