[Watch] Pearly-Thinaah Win Bronze, And Match A Record Malaysia Has Not Beaten In 64 Years
In 64 years of Asian Games badminton, no Malaysian women’s doubles pair has reached the final. Pearly Tan and M. Thinaah did not change that on Sunday (27 Sep) — they joined the very short list of pairs who came closest, and bronze is still the ceiling.
Pearly Tan and M. Thinaah lost their semi-final in 85 minutes.
What they walked away with was more complicated than a defeat.
The world No. 5 pair fell to China’s Liu Sheng Shu and Tan Ning — ranked world No. 1 — by 21-16, 20-22, 12-21 at the Ichinomiya City Municipal Gymnasium in Aichi on Sunday (27 Sep), ending their run at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games with a bronze medal.
It was a loss.
It was also, by the numbers, the best result any Malaysian women’s doubles pair has produced at the Asian Games since the event was introduced in 1962.
No pair in 64 years has gone further.
The bronze matches what Tan Gaik Bee and Ng Mei Ling achieved in Jakarta in 1962, and what Vivian Hoo and Woon Khe Wei managed in Incheon in 2014.
The ceiling has not moved.
Same Opponent, Same Story
The match itself told a familiar story for Pearly-Thinaah against this particular opponent.
Liu and Tan entered Sunday having beaten the Malaysian pair seven times in ten career meetings.
The pattern held.
Pearly-Thinaah took the first game and pushed the Chinese pair to a third.
But on the third set, they maintained the same pace and focus — I think that put a lot of pressure on us.
Thinaah acknowledged the pair were not composed enough at critical moments, contrasting their composure with the more experienced Chinese pair’s ability to handle pressure points.
Both said they would review the match footage before moving on.
The bronze is a step forward from their 2022 campaign.
At the Hangzhou Asian Games, Pearly-Thinaah exited at the quarter-final stage.
This time they reached the last four — the furthest any Malaysian women’s doubles pair has gone at the Games.
The pair have been among Asia’s most consistent women’s doubles partnerships over the past three years.
They reached a career-high world No. 2 ranking in 2025, and claimed silver at the BWF World Championships that same year — the closest either player has come to a world title.
At the Asian Games, however, the final has remained out of reach — not just for this pair, but for every Malaysian women’s doubles combination across six decades of competition.
The road ahead is immediate.
Thinaah said the pair would return to Malaysia for approximately one week of recovery before heading to Europe for the Danish Open and French Open on the BWF World Tour calendar.
The bronze ends Malaysia’s 12-year wait for a women’s doubles medal at the Asian Games.
