BWF Thomas\u00a0Cup Finals 2026 teams and players to watch, including Lee Zii Jia
\nThomas Cup Group A: People’s Republic of China, India, Canada, Australia<\/p>\n
As defending champions, China are expected to breeze through the group. They can count on singles world no.1 Shi Yuqi<\/a> and no.7 Li Shifeng<\/a>, as well as the fifth-ranked doubles pair of Liang Weikeng<\/a>\/Wang Chang<\/a>. India are predicted to make it through too, with the likes of\u00a0Lakshya Sen<\/a>, rising star<\/a> Ayush Shetty, and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy<\/a>\/Chirag Shetty<\/a> in their squad. Canada’s Victor Lai has enjoyed a quick rise through the world rankings following his stunning run to a bronze medal<\/a> at last year’s individual World Championships, and the world no.13 will hope to help the Canadians pull off an upset or two.<\/p>\n Thomas Cup Group B: Japan, Malaysia, England, Finland<\/p>\n Japan have four men ranked in the world singles top 20, and three of them \u2014 Naraoka Kodai<\/a>, Tanaka Yushi, and Watanabe Koki, head up a strong team alongside the top Japanese doubles pairing of Hoki Takuro<\/a>\/Kobayashi Yugo<\/a>. Malaysia have added Lee Zii Jia<\/a>, the former world no.2, whose injury issues have seen him tumble to his current ranking of 83rd, in their squad, but he would appear to be the fourth-choice singles player. Instead, look for their doubles pairings \u2014 three of the top seven in the world rankings are Malaysian \u2014 to lead the charge.<\/p>\n Thomas Cup Group C: Chinese Taipei, Denmark, Republic of Korea, Sweden<\/p>\n Chou Tien-chen<\/a> and All England champion Lin Chun-yi are the star draws on a Chinese Taipei team which will be looking over their shoulders to avoid upsets from Denmark and the Republic of Korea. The Danes are led by world no. 3 Anders Antonsen<\/a> and their top doubles selection of Kim Astrup<\/a>\/Anders Skaarup Rasmussen<\/a>, although they are hampered by the recent injury-enforced retirement<\/a> of Viktor Axelsen<\/a>. Meanwhile, Republic of Korea will look to their world no.1 doubles team, Kim Wonho<\/a>\/Seo Seungjae<\/a>, to help them progress out of the group.<\/p>\n Thomas Cup Group D: Indonesia, France, Thailand, Algeria<\/p>\n Indonesia will hope to regain a title they last won at the 2020 edition, held in 2021, with\u00a0Jonatan Christie<\/a> and Fajar Alfian<\/a>\/Muhammad Shohibul Fikri among those they can call on. France, who can boast the last two men’s European champions<\/a> in Christo Popov<\/a> and Alex Lanier, are also no walkovers. Despite having Olympic silver medallist and 2023 world champion Kunlavut Vitidsarn<\/a> available to them, there are questions where Thailand have sufficient depth behind him with such a stern test ahead of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BWF Thomas\u00a0Cup Finals 2026 teams and players to watch, including Lee Zii Jia Thomas Cup Group A: People’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-405177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}