Badminton in Asia comes with its superstitions and a Japanese expat believes fans ruined Long’s campaign by chasing him for autographs. In 2015, he was made the chief coach after Van Ass was sacked following a tiff with then Hockey India president Narinder Batra. from Lallana to beat the Slovakia in last September’s fixture, a game played under previous England manager Sam Allardyce. Zhang did not roll over, however, and broke Pliskova to take an early 2-0 lead in the third but Zhang’s mistakes soon started piling up. Striker Aleksandar Mitrovic shaved the outside of the post with a close-range header as some Serbian fans ran up the terraces for cover from bursts of driving rain. The sweetest song though gets played in silence when Nozomi Okuhara and PV Sindhu play the greatest tune in badminton. ’Young shuttler Rahul Bharadwaj eked out a hard-fought win over compatriot Kiran George to advance t. Why the Malaysians love Kidambi Srikanth, and other sights and sounds from World Badminton Championships. Maria Sharapova returned from a 15-month doping ban in April but was refused a wildcard for the French Open. We decide to like a player or not depending on how he moves his feet,” he adds.