THE World Badminton Federation (BWF) is likely to award Malaysia the job of hosting the 2010 Thomas and Uber Cup Finals.

The BA of Malaysia (BAM) will present an official bid to the Badminton World Federation (BWF) on Thursday and the world body is expected to award the event to Malaysia at its council meeting the next day.

BAM is confident that Malaysia will be awarded the hosts job as no other country had made a preliminary bid for the event before Sept 30, last year.

The BWF had set that date as the closing date for countries to submit their preliminary bids.

The world body had initially wanted to award the Thomas Cup and Uber Cup to different countries.
BAM honorary secretary P. Ganga Rao said the association had submitted a preliminary bid only for the Thomas Cup.

"However, since there were no takers for the Uber Cup after the preliminary closing date, we have decided to make an official bid for the Uber Cup as well," he said.

Meanwhile, several questions were raised at the team managers meeting yesterday after the BWF decided to revise the fixtures for the second time on Friday to accommodate the host country in the Uber Cup.

Initially, Indonesia were scheduled to play both of their Group Z matches tomorrow but after the hosts protested, the Netherlands will instead play both their matches on the same day.

Indonesia are now scheduled to play their first Group Z match tomorrow against Japan and against the Netherlands the next day.

All three teams are in Group Z.

Netherlands' manager M. Van Dooremalen and Japan coach Park Joo Bong raised this matter at the meeting but the BWF stood firm.