KU women’s badminton team come up short against a strong Surrey squad

Sweat and determination were not enough for KU’s badminton women to prevail over Surrey at Varsity 2013.

Lesley-Anne Morley

Despite big wins from doubles pair, Lilian Yau and Emily Kamruddin, the KU women’s badminton team came up short at Varsity 2013 against the University of Surrey losing 6-2.

The Cougars faced tough competition from the Stags at the Surrey Sports Park on Wednesday and finished with just two wins, one from Yau and Kamruddin, the other from doubles team Pieta Chan and Emma Clark.

Kamruddin said: “My strategy is to always go in, do my best and see happens.  I’ve never competed in England before so it’s a new experience and for now I’m just doing the best I can.”

Out of steam

Both of Kingston’s doubles teams played to a full set of three games in at least one of their match ups.

Exhaustion was a factor for both pairs, but especially for Chan and Clark who played back-to-back matches where long rallies and high-scoring games started to take their toll.

“We were getting tired,” said Chan. “It was towards the third game and it was straight after our other ones so the short break didn’t help.  We started making mistakes which makes you feel worse because we could have had it.”

Clark added: “We did play well, but near the end we lost it a bit which was a shame. In the first one we were really far ahead, but they came back and took it.  In the second we played really well, but by the third we weren’t even close.”

Stag Strategy

Kingston knew going in that Surrey would be difficult opponents as they were in the same league last year and many of the players had faced each other before.

Knowing the Cougars finished at the top of their league, Surrey captain Christy Ngan also anticipated a strong opposition in Kingston and planned the day’s strategy to get the best out of her team.

Ngan said: “Our strategy was to put our best players in the singles match ups. For the doubles we let the girls find the best fit between the remaining players to make a strong doubles showing too and that seems to have worked.”