Ben Lane and Sean Vendy achieved a landmark career victory by stunning the top seeds at the TotalEnergies BWF World Championships to reach the men’s doubles quarter-finals.
The English pair produced a superb display in Tokyo against Indonesia’s Marcus Fernaldi Gideon and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo to secure a 21-15, 21-9 victory.
Showing no fear against the famous ‘Minions’, Lane and Vendy never looked back after winning four points in a row in the first set to open up a 10-6 lead.
And the confidence of the 14th seeds only grew after gaining the advantage, the second game seeing them take nine straight points to move clear from their illustrious opponents and book a place in the last eight.
English pair Ben Lane and Sean Vendy were eying the opportunity to face Marcus Gideon and Kevin Sukamuljo from the start of the #BWFWorldChampionships.
And they didn’t let the opportunity go to waste, stunning the world No. 1 in men’s doubles in the round of 16.@bwfmedia pic.twitter.com/tLKF7BsQhm
— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) August 25, 2022
They will now face fifth seeds Fajar Alfian and Muhammad Rian Ardianto, also from Indonesia, on Friday for a place in the semi-finals.
A jubilant Lane said it would go down as one of their biggest victories to date.
“This definitely ranks up there as one of our best achievements,” he said. “We won silver at the Commonwealth Games a couple of weeks ago and that is probably at the top.
“Obviously, we are over the moon to beat the top seeds.
“We had a gameplan before the match, after sitting down with our coach Julien and we stuck to that really well.
“They probably didn’t play their best game today and I know Marcus is still recovering from an injury, but it was still tough.
“They are both absolutely amazing players and I’m sure they will be back winning tournaments very soon.”
Vendy said that adapting their tactical approach built the platform for the landmark win.
“I was really happy with the way we controlled the shuttle,” he added. “We didn’t hit ourselves out of position.
“We tried not to give them too many fast shots, we know that is what they like and how they like to rally.
“We took as much of that out of the game as possible and tried to really slow it down.
“We changed the pace of the shuttle pretty perfectly today.”
