Badminton: Hard draw for Macau in Thomas, Uber qualifying

Despite the local support the Macau teams will find it difficult to go through the Asian preliminary round of the Thomas Cup and the Uber Cup, that will be held in the territory from February 13 to 19.
In the draw for the Thomas Cup the local squad was placed on group B, along with India, Singapore and Indonesia. The Indonesians were the runner-ups in the last edition of the male competition.
In the Uber Cup group Z the Macau female team – which includes duo Wang Rong and Zhang Zhibo – will face rivals from Hong Kong and Japan. The Japanese are the main favourites to qualify, after reaching the semi-finals in the 2010 edition.
The local squad will include many of the young players who were defeated in the first round of the Badminton World Federation (BWF) World Junior Championships 2011, last November.
But the competition has also attracted to Macau many of the best players in the world, including the number one in the BWF ranking Lee Chong Wei, from Malaysia, the world number two pair of Jung Jae Sung and Lee Yong Dae, from South Korea, and former Olympic and world champion Taufik Hidayat, from Indonesia.
Only the two top-placed teams from each of the four groups will reach the round-robin phase.
The four best teams of the Asian qualifying round will make it to the finals of the biennial Thomas Cup and Uber Cup finals, to be held in the mainland Chinese city of Wuhan, from May 20 to 27.