The French Thomas Cup team settled in very quickly in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, and caused the first big upset at this year’s BWF Thomas and Uber Cup.
All did not go to plan
France faced India, a country who have a great pool of player to select from. And despite an absent Srikanth Kidambi, India would have been looking to advance from Group A, along with China. However, all did not go to plan today in IMPACT arena. India opted to rest their number one Men’s Doubles partnership, last week’s Australian Open semi-finalists, Manu Attri and Reddy Sumeeth. This subsequently led to the French doubles pairs to score 2 wins.
This left the 3 men’s singles to decide the match. Sai Praneeth overcame a late surge by Brice Leverdez to win in 2 games. Next up it was Lucas Corvee versus Sameer Verma. A repeat of the quarter-final of the Orleans Masters in March this year, where Verma won in 3 sets. However, a hard-working Corvee manage to reverse the results in a great 3 game match, winning 21-18, 20-22, 21-18.
The result was decided, but the final singles match was between two players who are perhaps the future of Badminton. Lakshya Sen and Toma Junior Popov are 16 and 19 years of age respectively. Similarly, for Popov, he was going into this match with a negative record against Sen, having lost in their two pervious encounters. Although today was France’s day, and he to fought terrifically to announce himself at this level with a tight 3 game victory, 22-20, 19-21, 21-19. France play China tomorrow, a much tougher test, but will hope to use the confidence gained in today’s great victory.
In other European results
Germany’s Uber Cup team found it hard against hosts Thailand, who look sharp and focused to impress their home fans with a 5-0 win.
It was a similar clean sweep for Germany’s Thomas Cup team when losing 5-0 to Chinese Taipei.
In an all European affair, the Danish Uber Cup team beat Russia 4-1. The score line doesn’t tell the full story with 4 out of the 5 matches going to 3 games.
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