NATHAN ROBERTSON and Gail Emms five times came within one point, and once within about two inches, of making history before losing a repeat of the Athens Olympics final at the Yonex All-England Open Championships amid a strange mixture of noisy jingoism and echoing disbelief at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham yesterday.
The defending champions from England were beaten 12-15, 17-14, 15-1 by Zhang Jun and Gao Ling, from China, and had Emms’s net shot not fallen back from the tape on the first of their five match points they would have been the first home players to defend an All-England title for 25 years.
“We didn’t have easy chances or any luck on the match points,” Robertson said. “And we may have been a little tense. But when you have five match points you should win.”
Even more exasperating for the home pair was that Zhang, a dangerous but sometimes wayward talent who had made enough errors for Robertson and Emms to claw back from 10-13 to 14-13 in the second game, played those five big points as if he were the world’s safest player.
Almost 5,000 spectators had enjoyed moments of great drama, at 10-13 when the English pair turned defence into attack to retrieve the service, at 13-10 when Zhang fell heavily at the back and at 13-11 when they booed him for contesting a line decision.
Advertisement
But these moments of noisy expectation evaporated into near silence as Robertson and Emms collapsed into harrowing paralysis, hardly able to contest the final game.
“It was mentally as much as anything that they lost it,” Ian Wright, the England performance director, said. “You get a positive effect from the home crowd but it is also mentally draining. There was all the emotion in the quarter- final when they came from 8-2 down (against Xie Zhangbo and Zhang Yawen, their conquerors in Hong Kong).
“And nine times out of ten, with five match points and getting really good serves into play, they would have won it.”
It was all the more frustrating because after beating Nova Widianto and Lilyana Natsir, the world champions, on Saturday, it seemed that Emms had got over a stomach upset that nearly caused her to withdraw before the semi-finals.
“There’s nothing anything anyone can say to make up for this disappointment,” Robertson said, though the pair had done enough throughout the week to suggest that they may still be the world’s best. Emms concurred. “Keep me away from sharp objects this evening,” she said.