Birmingham: World No. 13 Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia who made his All England debut this year, missed the opportunity to advance to the final, losing to World No. 7 Viktor Axelsen of Denmark 21-17, 13-21, 19-21 after a controversial call made by the umpire when the score was tied at 19-19 in the decider.
In the final game, at 19-19, Lee returned a serve from Axelsen, it was a very tight net shot which forced Axelsen to flick the shuttlecock high up the net and Lee immediately killed it with his back hand. However, the umpire waited no time to fault Lee Zii Jia accusing of hitting the shuttlecock over the net.
Lee was puzzled and couldn’t believe the call.
Here is the controversial shot. Frankly, Lee’s badminton racket did go over the net. If Lee didn’t hit it, it is very likely the shuttlecock would fall back to Axelsen’s side.
The 21-year-old tried to argue but to no avail, and Axelsen picked up the winning point after Lee hit the shuttlecock out of bound.
“Axelsen and I were both playing very well today, it was a little unfortunate for me at the end of third set especially at 19-19,” said Lee.
“Overall, it’s a good experience for me to be able to make semi-finals, considering this was my first All England,” added Lee.
“Axelsen definitely has more experience than me, I learned a lot from Axelsen in this match,” said Lee after the match.
“Few months ago, I went to Lee Chong Wei’s house, and he gave me a lot of advice, and I would like to thank him for that,” continued Lee.
Meanwhile, his coach, Hendrawan also praised Lee for his All England performance.
“I can see Zii Jia was trying her best. It was really a difficult situation when he was faulted at the critical moment of the match,” said Hendrawan.
“The most important thing would be the improvement he brought to the game, and we are going to prepare him to be a better player,” added Hendrawan.
In other men’s singles semi-finals, No. 5 seed Anders Antonsen twisted his right ankle when he was trailing 14-17 against No. 1 seed Chou Tien Chen in the first set. Antonsen had to retire from the match after the injury.
Below are the complete semi-final results for 2020 All England:
Men’s Singles:
Viktor AXELSEN [2] bt LEE Zii Jia -> 17-21, 21-13, 21-19
CHOU Tien Chen [1] bt Anders ANTONSEN [5] -> 17-14 Retired
Men’s Doubles:
Marcus Fernaldi GIDEON/Kevin Sanjaya SUKAMULJO [1] bt LEE Yang/WANG Chi-Lin [7] -> 21-18, 21-13
Hiroyuki ENDO/Yuta WATANABE [6] bt Vladimir IVANOV/Ivan SOZONOV -> 21-16, 21-15
Women’s Singles:
CHEN Yu Fei [1] bt Nozomi OKUHARA [4] -> 21-14, 23-21
TAI Tzu Ying [2] bt Carolina MARIN [8] -> 19-21, 21-13, 21-11
Women’s Doubles:
DU Yue/LI Yin Hui [6] bt LEE So Hee/SHIN Seung Chan [4] -> 21-17, 21-17
Yuki FUKUSHIMA/Sayaka HIROTA [3] bt Misaki MATSUTOMO/Ayaka TAKAHASHI [7] -> 21-12, 21-12
Mixed Doubles:
Dechapol PUAVARANUKROH/Sapsiree TAERATTANACHAI [3] bt SEO Seung Jae/CHAE Yujung [6] -> 21-18, 17-21, 21-19
Praveen JORDAN/Melati Daeva OKTAVIANTI [5] bt Marcus ELLIS/Lauren SMITH -> 21-15, 21-23, 21-11
