Taiwan Billiards Team Show Their Class

Taiwan Billiards Team Show Their ClassIn an intriguing last 16 clash between Far Eastern pool powers, the Japan billiard team took on the Taiwanese billiards team pairing of Yang Ching-shun and Wang Hung-hsiang for a place in the quarter-finals of the PartyPoker.com World Cup of Pool. However, the result went with the form book as fifth seeds Taiwan completed a comfortable 9–4 victory. The Japanese side of Satoshi Kawabata and Masaki Tanaka gave it a good go in the early stages before the superior class saw Taiwan run through the last five racks.Who do you think will win? Discuss World Cup of Pool here. This was effectively Japan's first match of the competition following their bye through the first round when Indonesia failed to arrive due to late visa problems.
The first two racks were shared with quality break and runs from both teams and there was more of the same from Taiwan in the third game to restore their lead in the alternate break format. Japan were forced to play the first safety of the match following their break in the next and a missed 2 ball allowed Taiwan to steal the rack and get the score to 3-1. Tanaka and Kawabata fought back in the next to reduce the margin to a single rack at 3-2. The Japanese took the next with the break to level it before the Taiwanese duo carefully went through the pack to restore their lead at 4-3. The teams shared the next two racks as the match was finely poised at 5–4 to Taiwan. In the next, Yang escaped from a terrific snooker by using his jump stick but Kawabata inexplicably missed the long pot on the 1 ball. It was a critical error as Taiwan went on to clear the table and establish a 6-4 lead. There was plenty of safety play in the next and Tanaka escaped superbly from a table length snooker, but Kawabata once again made a mistake as he left the orange five on for Taiwan when trying to play safe and Yang and Wang increased their lead to 7–4. With Japan's hopes fading fast, Taiwan took the next to get to the hill and with the break in the next, Yang put the 1, 2 and 3 down to give themselves a great chance of closing out the match. They made no mistakes as Yang and Wang made their way into the weekend’s quarter-finals where they will play either Spain or Germany. “We played much better than in our opening match against India two days ago,” said Yang." It’s the first time we’ve really played doubles together but we know each other’s games fairly well. “This is a tough tournament and we haven’t thought too much about winning the tournament, we’ve just taken each game as it comes. If we can play the same as this game in our next match and our opponents don’t rise to the occasion then we can win."

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