King's Cup Triangular Match - Kota Bahru

This year's venue for the Annual Triangular Match between PSC, Kota Bahru and Sungai Golok was at the Kelantan Golf and Country Club in Kota Bahru on 12 July 2008. We've been playing this triangular since 2000 and we always approach the away legs of this Triangle with the expectation that we can only beat Kelantan and never defeat the Thais, because they always can assemble a powerful team from all over southern Thailand.

Kota Bahru is only 230 Kilometers from Penang (according to my GPS), but the journey by car takes 5 hours or more , much of it twisty and winding thru the central range that divides the east coast from the west coast of Malaysia... Despite a new highway that eliminates some of the journey... several of us elected to ride the "Firefly"
Firefly was great. Flight was smooth, comfortable and short. Scheduled for 1 hour , we where on the ground in 45 minutes and actual flying time was less than 30 minutes...

Jimmy Boon, Naidu and Mani hit some bad weather when they flew over on Thursday. Their flight was delayed about three hours... its not known what they did with their extra time on the east coast, but whatever it was, they were in poor condition to play on Saturday..

Our first match was against Kelantan, as the Thais were a bit late to turn up... The format was 2 mens, 1 veterans, 1 mixed and 1 ladies doubles... first to reach 9, tie-break at 8 all... We felt we had a pretty strong team, but it quickly became apparent that our men had expended their energy elsewhere. They were absolutely useless against Kelantan... The only exception was our ever-consistent and ever-ready Japanese, Mr. Sasaki , who partnered his wife, Keiko and tormented their mixed doubles opponents and secured the first point for us. Our ladies also swept to victory 9-Love with Lisa partnering our "Chili Padi" , Jawairiah Noordin, (Ladies #1 in Malaysia, Juniors #152 in the World and soon to start touring on the WTA).

We just needed one of the men's pairs to win the tie... but Ooi Soon Hong and Jawairiah's father Noordin went down 5-9. We were still feeling pretty confident as KK Chee and Nik "Shwa Pow" Chua started out leading 4 -1... but they quickly fell apart and KK Chee found himself using the last of his energy to save 3 match points at 5-8 before losing 6-9.

Jimmy Boon and Naidu played the decider but were apparently still feeling the effects of their nite time activities and also crashed out... and thus we lost to Kelantan for the first time in history...

Our Captain, Loo Choo Teng, who is normally the loudest voice in the vicinity suddenly went "Boh Sia" and gave up on our chances ... he got so disgusted that he went off to "Curi Ayam".... (no, not that kind) ... He went to buy Ayam Percik and Murtabok from the famous Yati Ayam Percik where some of us had dinner the nite before.

We fully expected to be slaughtered by the Thais after lunch... but we had the good fortune to watch the Kelantanese play them first. It became apparent as Kelantan stretched the Thais to 3 2 before going down, that if we could repeat our success in the ladies and the mixed doubles, we might be able to snatch 2nd place on count back, if one of our men could raise their game and get one more point against the thais... Kelantan assumed we were going to field the same team as before, (as did the Thais), but I called the Captain while on his chicken expedition and we agreed to juggle the team and see what we could salvage.

Once I clarified with the Kelantan folks that we had not submitted our team for the final round against Sungai Golok, we had a little pow-wow and selected our players... We decided to split Lisa and Jawairiah. We paired Lisa with Keiko Sasaki, and put Jawairiah with her father Noordin. We moved Soon Hong up the veteran's with Mr. Sasaki, and put "Shwah Pow" with Mani as second doubles. All these changes seemed to catch the Thais off guard and they attempted to amend their lineup after submission, but this was disallowed...

KK Chee and Jimmy Boon strapped on their body armor but were murdered by stray bullets from the Thai first doubles pair... but then Lisa and Keiko almost won by default when half the thai team went on the court when one of their ladies twisted her ankle...but there was no reason for us to win that way, because they made short work of their opponents, beating them 9 1 . Then the moment Jawairiah opened fire with her "cannon" overhead and demolished her opponents 9 0 we knew our stategy might work...

We really started cheering when Soon Hong suddenly found his form and together with Sasaki delivered another kosong to the Thai veterans. We checked the previous round results and did a few calculations and realized if we didn't win anything else, we'd still win the tournament on count back because of the large number of kosong's we'd recorded...

Then the Kelantanese folks realized if we beat the thais 4-1, that would put Kota Bahru in second place for the first time in history... so suddenly Nik and Mani had twice as many supporters! They didn't disappoint and they sent the thai's packing 9 -1 and so we managed to win the cup on the road for the first time in history.

The Kelantanese folks were great hosts and we had wonderful food and very warm hospitality from their Captain Abdul Hadi and the rest of the fine folks at the Kelantan Golf and Country Club..

The PSC was really on a roll that day, because we not only won the King's Cup, but we also won the banana eating contest as well as the "Boat Race"!


We really look forward to meeting them all again next year. But Encik Hadi warned us that Thai's will likely be looking for revenge when we all meet up again in Sungai Golok!