Thomas Cup: Malaysia Must Win or Nothing.

Later today, Malaysia will play China in the Thomas Cup semi-final. My hopes, and I hope all Malaysians hopes, are the Malaysians will play to their best and win the tie, and move on to win the cup for the first time since 1992.

I was reading the papers earlier today and realize that the very risky Malaysian mentality is there again, hoping to pad the fall of the Malaysians in case they lose to the ’superior’ Chinese team. Words like how ‘IT WILL be a tall order for Malaysia to beat China’ will always appear alongside the Malaysian courage and determination. The difficult odds will always be repeated often enough so that our expectation sometimes sound like this: It’ll be great and stunning if Malaysia can beat China, but if they don’t, hey, we lost to the favorites.

In any other sport in Malaysia, like football, such an excuse would perhaps be forgivable for the time being. But badminton is an example of how we can’t seem to get the extra inch to win difficult ties. This is a sport that quite frankly, we’re not lousy at. In fact, it is a sport that we should be winning, over and over again. But we’re not, because we leave room for defeat. We create a small alley for escape even before the matches happen.

Yes, China will be difficult to beat. They have three strong singles, and a good doubles pair. Malaysia has three strong singles too who are perhaps less consistent than the Chinese, and two strong doubles pair. On a good day, our team would destroy anyone. On a bad day, we’ll look like even the Germans can beat us.

Here’s my expectation: Malaysia must win against China today. If we lose by a whisker, too bad. We were lousier. We try again next time. If we win, then we will work on Indonesia/Korea in the next round. There’s not much else to say about it other than we’re always in it to win. Regardless of the strength and depth of our team, we don’t set semi-final targets. We aim to win, because in the case of badminton, we can.

Take a page out of Nicol David’s success in squash. No one in the country, and herself included, I believe, expects her to finish 2nd in a tournament. No one says ‘well done’ when she gets a silver. We want her to win, win, win, and win. We want her to pulverize every single fly and giant that comes her way. And she’s winning.

We need to destroy the escape route for our badminton team and expect nothing less than a win.

Because we can.

Malaysia memang boleh (jika kita benar-benar mempercayainya)