TOP national women’s doubles pair of Pearly Tan-Thinaah Muralitharan needs no introduction for their court exploits.
On May 18, the duo was crowned the Toyota Thailand Open 2025 champion to become the first Malaysian women’s pair to win the 41-year-old event.
They came close for close to their second title this year at the Kapal Api Indonesia Open 2025 only to lose out in the final to China’s world’s No.1 of Liu Shengshu-Tan Ning in rubber set 25-23, 12-21, 19-21 on June 8.
However, a recent social media post chose to highlight the pair’s somewhat bizarre on-court outfits.
Facebooker Rinny Ryn Yong has likened the pair’s skirt as looking like “a boy’s boxer shorts with a sweat towel tucked behind”!
Her light-hearted observation drew a lot of comments with many thinking they were the only ones who thought the sports attire looked weird. But alas, many out there shared the same observation.
Quite a few were left wondering why the famed shuttlers were wearing their undies on the outside – ala superman – or in this case “Malaysian superwomen”.
Many did highlight that it was the fault of the kit designers rather than the pair per se.
The duo who is currently ranked third best women’s doubles pairing in the world were said to have little choice in the matter as the outfit is largely dictated by the Badminton Association of Malaysia’s (BAM) sponsors.
One netizen though wondered how such design could be approved by the BAM which is the sport’s governing body in Malaysia.
Quite a few though did see the funny side, claiming it was designed to purposely confuse the opponents. One went on to label it as a clever “deceptive strategy”.
All said and done, Pearly-Thinaah are no chumps. As reported in the New Straits Times, they have already pocketed RM614,511 from the World Tour in 1H 2025 alone.
They earned the hundreds of thousands from 10 tournaments with the biggest purse coming from the Indonesia Open where they took home US$50,750 (RM214,670; runners-up). Earlier in the year, they earned RM158,689 for their Thailand Open triumph.
Their other winnings came from the Indonesia Masters 2025 (RM76,368; runners-up) and India Open 2025 (RM56,275; semi-finalist).
Pearly-Thinaah will resume their hunt for more honours and money at the Daihatsu Japan Open 2025 from July 15-20 which offers RM265,782 for the women’s doubles top prize.
Let us all wish them luck while at the same time hope they have snazzier uniforms this time.
But as one netizen pointed out, whatever uniform they may be wearing, the important thing is their form on the court. – June 14, 2025
