Kuala Lumpur: The 2021 Sudirman Cup will be held in Vantaa, Finland, between 26 September and 3 October 2021, and the defending champions, China became the top seeds while the Japanese team ranked second.
Indonesia and Chinese Taipei are the joint third and fourth seeds. South Korea, Thailand, Denmark, Malaysia rounded up the joint fifth to eight seeds.
Suzhou, China was the original host for the 2021 championships, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Badminton World Federation (BWF) was unable to run any tournaments in China in 2021, therefore, the event was relocated to Vantaa in Finland.
The badminton powerhouse China has won 11 out of the last 16 editions of the Sudirman Cup. With the tournament not going to be held on home soil, and given how China team has given up on all international tournaments since March of 2020 (except for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics) due to concerns over COVID-19, it is possible for China to withdraw itself from the tournament at the last minute.
Despite suffering huge disappointment at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Japan will be an interesting team to watch at the Sudirman Cup. The Japanese have never won the tournament, but they have top players in all five disciplines of badminton. Kento Momota is the World No. 1 men’s singles player, Nozomi Okuhara and Akane Yamaguchi are the World No. 3 and No. 5 women’s singles player; Hiroyuki Endo/Yuta Watanabe and Takeshi Kamura/Keigo Sonoda are World No. 5 and No. 6 in men’s doubles, Yuki Fukushima/Sayaka Hirota and Mayu Matsumoto/Wakana Nagahara are the World No. 1 and World No. 3 women’s doubles pairs. On paper, the Japanese team looks stronger than the Chinese team. The Sudirman Cup will be the chance for a star-studded Japanese to redeem itself after suffering shocking disappointments at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
With 1 Olympic gold medal (Lee Yang/Wang Chi-lin in men’s doubles) and 1 Olympic silver medal (Tai Tzu Ying in women’s singles) under the Taiwanese team’s belt alongside World No. 4 men’s singles player Chou Tien Chen, the Chinese Taipei team can pull off upset against any other teams.
Meanwhile, the Malaysians could avoid facing the top seeds in the early group stage as they were seeded in the top eight.
The Sudirman Cup will be the first major tournament to be played in Europe at the end of the year, followed by Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Aarhus, Denmark, from Oct 9 to Oct 17 and the World Championships will be held in Huelva, Spain, from Dec 12 to Dec 19.
