Fuzhou, China, June 22,
2012 – Australia, Indonesia, Japan and China have ousted their respective
opponents to advance to the semifinals of the AVC Men’s Beach Volleyball Continental
Cup Final at Min River Park on Friday.
Australia uncovered a
solid campaign to oust Kazakhstan. The Australians took advantage of the weary
condition that the Kazakhs suffered from their previous match against New
Zealand. Cristopher McHugh and Joshua Slack upheld the Australian dynamism by effortlessly
defeating the tandems of Kazakhstan’s Dimitriy Yakovlev and Alexey Kuleshov 2-0
(21-15, 21-14), and Alexandr Dyanchenko and Alexey Sidorenko 2-0 (21-19, 21-16).
The other Australian duo
of Sam Boehm and Isaac Kapa faced a good challenge by Dyachenko/Sidorenko until
the end of the tiebreaker, but their efforts were good enough to put the game
away from Kazakhstan 2-1 (22-20, 16-21, 16-14).
China coped with their
duty to rout Thailand in all three matches. Zhou Shun and Li Jian had the
opportunity to show its wares by easily defeating Panupong Toyam and Teerapat
Pollueang 2-0 (21-15, 21-16), but had more difficulty in the hands of Sittichai
Sangkhachot and Prathip Sukto 2-1 (18-21, 21-18, 15-11).
As Australia and China
both aced its matches, Indonesia and Japan had to thread the needle to move on
to the next round.
Oman’s first
team of Badar Said Abdullah Al Subhi and Haitham Khalfan Abdulla Al Shereiqi
were successful on their first outing against the Indonesian pair Dian Putra
Santosa and Fahriansyah Fahriansyah 2-0 (21-18, 21-19) but failed to outwit the
energetic pair Koko Prasetyo Darkuncoro and Ade Rachmawan in three sets.
Koko/Chandra
and Dian/Fahri had no problems defeating the other Omani pair Hassan Al Balushi
and Ahmed Khadoum Al Hosni to secure a seat at the semifinals.
The duel
between Japan and Iran is comparable to a ping-pong game as they exchanged wins
in the first four matches that forced them to play the golden set where Japan
eventually prevailed.
The semifinal
match-ups will see top seeds Australia going up against Indonesia while Japan
will try to prove themselves against the host team China.
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