Korea lived one of its worst badminton nightmares ever, after both their Thomas Cup and Uber Cup teams were beaten in Tokyo. After the boys were beaten by an inspired Malaysian team, the upset of the day came with the loss of their girls to Chinese Taipei...

What a crazy day. After one day of rest - or travelling - from Sendai to Tokyo, the squads who had made it to the quarter finals were to play in Tokyo for the first time, in a gymnasium which is twice the size of the one in Sendai. And that wasn't the only surprise. The Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium was completely filled by spectators - quite unexpected from Japan, which is not a badminton country like Indonesia or Malaysia. And the 10,000 spectators got their money's worth with a quarter finals that was a big mix of emotions for a lot of players and teams, with unexpected wins and losses. The drastic outcome of the day is that Korea will not have any team in the semi finals of the Thomas or Uber Cup on Friday.

When Fung Permadi, Chinese Taipei's coach, was talking the previous evening to his friends from Taiwan or his native country of Indonesia, he told them that beating Korea was like a mission impossible. Yet his girls achieved the impossible and beat one of the strong contenders for gold or silver. The Koreans were relying on a very young team, with Seo left on the bench and fielding Hwang, Lee and Jun as the three singles. And the first two lost their matches giving Chinese Taipei a psychological boost when they led 2/1 against the favourites of the tie.

Jun Jae Youn brought Korea back in the tie to 2/2, leaving it up to Lee Hyo Jung and Lee Kyung Won to qualify the team. Yet no matter how experienced the Koreans were, they hadn't been playing many tournaments with the new scoring system and were obviously bothered by the impressive defence put up by Chien and Cheng, who are also world class players, but still behind the Koreans. Surprisingly, it was Permadi's girls who took the first game before Lee and Lee took the second one 21/17 - still quite close. And the third game was a thriller, with the team mates from Cheng and Chien giggling at each point taken. Both teams could not take a clear lead throughout the game, until the end when Chinese Taipei led 18/16 then 19/17 and then 20/18, with two match points to come.

Once the Koreans got back even, people sensed that the less experienced might have let go of their chance to qualify their team, but they scored right after, giving themselves a third match point. And they finally secured the victory, before they were hugged by their team mates after this historical win. "This was most unexpected. We knew we would probably be playing Korea when we arrived here and our target was to reach this stage. We have been training together as a group since the beginning of the year and I thought it was crucial to have a chance in such team competitions, rather than have them just train in their clubs, but I sure didn't expect it to come so early," said Permadi.

His girls will be meeting China, the only easy winners of this quarter final stage. "We have nothing to lose against them. Some players or pairs have shown good results against the Chinese before, so we'll see what happens," smiled the Indonesian. "I hope that this victory will prove that training together is effective and that it will have an impact back home so that we have more funding," added the former singles top player.

One says team spirit can make a difference. It sure did today in the Tokyo Gymnasium, which welcomed another undecided match between Hong Kong and Germany. And the German girls surely did know how to get the 10 000 strong crowd going in order to boost their confidence. Birgit Overzier, Nicole Grether Sandra Marinello took turns to get on court and clap with their giant hand in order to get the spectators to cheers for them. It worked wonders even if the Thomas Cup match on the next court between Japan and Indonesia would later take all the attention. It didn't matter. Germany knew they had a good chance to make it to the last four and win their first medal in the competition.

It was first Xu Huaiwen against Wang Chen for an appealing first match and a deciding point. The recent European champion - who was facing a two-time Asian Champion - took an early lead, as Wang Chen was obviously trying to take control of her strokes in a much windier stadium than the previous days in Sendai. Xu took the first game 21/8 before the Asian woke up and started using her talent to dispute Xu's stamina.

Wang was then back on tracks and left hardly any chance to her former compatriot and took the other two games 21/12 - 21/12. But Germany came back quickly to take the second and third singles, to take the tie to 2/2 after Wang Chen had secured the second point for her team in the women's double, with a strong last double to come - Juliane Schenk and Nicole Grether.

Expected to win, the German duo didn't disappoint and went all the way to beat Chau and Wong 21/9 - 21/10. “This is historical as Germany never qualified a team for the semi final of the Uber Cup. We knew we had a chance entering the court as our coaches had told us we had a 50/50 chance, and we were confident after the tie 2/2, but we needed to remain focused to win our match," said an excited Grether. "Then we just enjoyed ourselves, stayed relaxed. Our win over Singapore helped us, but now we have to face China. Once again, we have nothing to lose, so, we'll be relaxed," added Schenk. This victory is also remarkable as it was won by the players raised in Germany while their imported player didn't deliver a point. "Of course this makes us proud to be able to be there also when Huaiwen doesn't win, but we're a very a high spirited team and it gave us a big help today," said Grether.

It was expected that the tie between the Netherlands and host Japan would be a tight one and it was, even if the winners of the day were not necessarily the ones one thought as Japan was the favourites in the absence of Yao Jie. Mia Audina, who was counted on to bring a first point was tricked by Kaori Mori, who simply used everything she had to tire the Dutch. Mia did come back to one game all, saving already some match points in the second game, but the Japanese was just too fit and took the third game 21/17 in front of an ecstatic crowd.

Then it was Hirose's turn to bring back an important second point, yet on the other side of the net, Judith Meulendijks was just fired up and made up for the injury of her team mate to beat the Japanese wonder in three games. Kanako Yonekura, the pretty long time top player for her country and now playing as a third single delivered a crucial second point in three games as well, while all other matches were long time finished.

Ogura and Shiota, the most popular duo in Japan, were then called to bring the last point, yet Mia Audina and Judith Meuleundijks once again turned the odds around in this crazy night and got the two teams to a tie 2/2 with an uneven last match to come; Matsuda and Akao against scratch pair of De Wit and new comer Ginny Severien. As the last surprise of the day - not to the taste of the large number of spectators remaining in the stadium, the Japanese simply collapsed under the great pressure and after the first game which they won, there was just no hint of attacking spirit left in the Japanese game. It was all defence and very short clears which were a blessing for the 1.80m tall Karina de Wit, who kept hitting down the shuttle to score. One point after the other, the Dutch carried on to win the last game 21/14.

"We knew we had a chance against Japan if we fielded an unusual pair, as they can easily lose their focus if they are taken by surprise. This is just what happened today. It shows that we were right to go for the bottom of the draw and not top our group. We had three top players missing (Yao Jie, Beenhakkeer who just retired in the European Championships and Lotte Bruil who is pregnant) and we had to find another solution. We were lucky that it worked," said Van Dooremalen, the Dutch team manager with a big smile.

The Netherlands will play Chinese Taipei - certainly not what they expected while China takes on Germany - quite an unexpected foursome!