KUALA LUMPUR: The ongoing Badminton Asian Mixed Team Championship (BAMTC) in Qingdao, China, is supposed to be a stage for many of the competing teams to expose their next generation of players.

Worryingly for Malaysia, their players came up second best in the battle of the second stringers. Malaysia even failed to reach the quarter-finals, which is unprecedented.

A day earlier, Malaysia suffered a surprise 3-2 loss to Hong Kong in Group B.

Former international Rashid Sidek said such setback is of major concern.

Malaysia exited the tournament early after falling 3-2 to Indonesia, who fielded a team of mostly second liners and new doubles combinations.

Rashid felt that the Malaysian line-up lacked punch compared with their Indonesian counterparts.

"Indonesia have shown that their back-up is more solid than ours. Malaysia must emphasise more on building our second stringers or results such as this will be produced again in future," said Rashid.

"Although our seniors have established themselves, there is a big gap between them and the rest of the national players and this doesn't augur well for international tournaments, especially in team events.

"Pei Kee-Mei Xing are our second-ranked pair, but they couldn't overcome the relatively new Indonesian pair. Without our strongest line-up, we don't stand a chance in team events like the Thomas Cup and Sudirman Cup.

"The top Indonesian players are not playing at the BAMTC but they have done better than us and at the current state, we can only beat Hong Kong by fielding our senior players and pairs.

"Not only Indonesia but other rivals like China, Japan, South Korea and Thailand have been churning out quality players. We have to start doing something.

"We will obviously do better in the Sudirman Cup in May with a full-strength squad but our back-up is a concern, and the BA of Malaysia must invest more on building the second liners."