All England 2013 So did the former titleholders, Koo Kien Keat and Tan Boon Heong, who are the second seeds. This left only two seeded pairs in the semi-finals with the most notable giant-killers being the rising Chinese combo of Liu Xiaolong and Qiu Zihan.
They were the conquerors of the top-seeded Danes, and they reached the semi-finals with an emphatic 21-12, 21-10 win over the Malaysians, Zakry Abdul Latif and Mohammed Tazari.
The match of the day though was that in which the fourth seeded Japanese pair, Hiroyuki Endo and Kenichi Hayakawa, came back from 12-14 and 14-15 down in the final game to win 21-19 in the decider against the two Kims, Ki Jung and Sa Rang, the sixth seeded Koreans.
There were even better comebacks in the mixed doubles. Xu Chen and Ma Jin, the top seeds from China, were 18-16 up in the final game but were upset 16-21, 21-13, 21-18 by Muhammad Rijal and Debby Susanto, the seventh seeded Indonesians.
Then Sudket Prapakamol and Saralee Thoungthongkam, the winners of Super Series title in Tokyo, Paris and Jakarta, looked odds on to make the semis when they led 19-17 in the second game and 20-18 in the third game – two match points – only to lose 19-20, 22-20, 22-20 in an extraordinary match against the unseeded Markis Kido and Pia Bernadeth. The Indonesians rolled around the court as if they had won the tournament.
They now play their compatriots Tontowi Ahmad and Lilyana Natsir, who are the only players in this year’s All England who can still achieve a complete retention a title.
Only the women’s doubles appears to have followed a more orderly pattern, with three of the four semi-finalists coming from China who have won this title eleven times in the last 12 years.
The top seeds, Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli are among them,with Yu is going for her third title in four years.

By Richard Eaton