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Scottish Ladies Make the Quarters
Although their opening two matches in the Uber Cup in Holland provided Scotland with 5-0 victories, the Scottish female badminton team was taking nothing for granted in their final Group G encounter with Bulgaria, with the winners of the match qualifying through to the quarter final stages.
| The Group A match in Almere, Holland provided the setting for this landmark victory and what made it all the more impressive was that Scotland recovered from losing their first game to eventually triumph by a convincing 4-1 margin. When Craig Goddard lost out in the opening game against Misha Zilberman 21-16, 17-21, 21-18, the signs were not looking good but it was a spirited display by Goddard and no doubt his team mates took enthusiasm from the way he controlled and won the second set. The beauty of the Thomas Cup is that the matches come thick and fast and there is no time to be despondent as the opportunity to get a win in the following game comes around quickly. The speed of turnaround was shown when Scotland took control of the tie in a short space of time. The deficit was immediately squared when Stuart Gilliland strode to a straight sets win over Shai Geffen by a margin of 21-16, 21-15 and Scotland took the lead in the singles match-ups when Glasgows Gordon Thomson defeated Alexander Bass by a convincing 21-13, 21-16 score line. The quality of the Scottish teams play was shown by them picking up 5 victories in the 7 games that were played and the stage was set for the Doubles players to carry on this level of form and consistency. Overall victory in the match was assured when Watson Briggs and Thomas Bethell won the first Doubles match with a routine win over Zilberman and Geffen.? The 21-8, 21-14 was evident of their superiority and perhaps the freshness of the Scottish players in comparison to their Israeli counterparts, who had taken part in earlier singles matches, showed. Although it would have been easy for the Scottish team to have lowered their performance levels in the final match given that they had already secured victory, Andrew Bowman and David Gilmour ensured there was no low point at the end of the match by comfortably beating Alexander Bass and Nir Yusim 21-13, 21-11. Written off as a team before they had even embarked on their journey to the Thomas Cup, this result for the Scottish Badminton Male team further indicated the rise in performance and quality throughout the Scottish game and although the team are not quite capable of achieving the performance levels that their female counterparts have so far managed, there is enough to suggest there is improvement within the Scottish game and that more victories in international tournaments are likely to follow. Whether a victory would follow in the Scottish Mens teams next match against tournament top seeds and current Thomas Cup holders Denmark is possibly too much to ask for but there is genuine hope that the Scottish badminton team are genuinely on the rise. |
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