Thomas Cup Dreams Abruptly Stopped

Don't say that I am unpatriotic, but I didn't really get the Thomas-Uber Cups fever that seemed to have infected the whole city in recent days. Nevertheless, I still followed the results and still felt proud that the Indonesian team is going strong. The target to couple Thomas & Uber Cups in Indonesia's hands was so realistic and so close. For one part, the Uber team got its spot in the finals after beating Germany 3-1. Consequently, hopes were high that the Thomas team will get its place in the finals too.

Unfortunately, Indonesia's hopes to hold the Thomas Cup once more is smashed away by Korea 3-0 just like that. In the first round, Sony Dwi Kuncoro fell. Later, pairs Markis Kido/Hendra Setiawan followed. At that time, Indonesia could only rely on Taufik Hidayat to keep the chance of going to the final round. Call it bad luck, call it flawed, or whatever you like; we just have to accept that Indonesia has to say good bye to its Thomas Cup dreams, thus its Thomas-Uber dreams too. Even more unfortunately, that was the first time I watched the tournament on tv. Kiss of death?

Before I start, I'm not gonna pretend that I can play the game extraordinarily well, so I'm not gonna comment on how he played. Still, allow me to be frank: it sucks to be Taufik Hidayat in these coming days, seriously. When the whole nation (at least the ones watching) pinned its last hopes on him, he had to lose that badly. Oh sure, everyone will say that they're proud despite the outcome, they're satisfied with the results, there's still the next Thomas Cup, so on and so forth. On the contrary, seeing the audience after the match reveals much more. The tv screen was full of disappointed faces, and let's not forget the watery eyes. I could swear that Youth and Sports Minister Adhyaksa Dault looked so blurgh while watching the last match. Everybody, let's wear the smiley mask now.

Regardless of the results, let me share my thoughts about watching the match for the first time (on tv). The tv commentator should really shut up! He's wrecking the whole event with his incessant redundancies and fake expertise -well, forgive me if he was a real badminton player- but try not to speak too much. He should've made comments, not reports. He didn't need to tell everyone if Taufik just hit the shuttlecock, we can see that for ourselves. Again, don't call me unpatriotic, but the cheering got irrelevant at points. It was irritating to hear some overexcited fans' yells when everybody else was silent. Maybe the broadcaster could tune that noise down for the tv audience, that'd be nice. Anyway, that was one solid crowd.