China (2) Captures World Team Championships

Team China  Photos Courtesy Tai Chengzhe/China Foto Press & the WPA.

By: Markus Noé

The home team of China (2) avenged the loss of their counterpart China (1) in the semi-final against the same Filipino team. Yesterday the Filipinos came out flying, dominating the entire session and sending China (1) home with an embarrassing 4-0 defeat.

However as a country, China takes pool very seriously and the team of China (2) had no intentions of letting the Philippines embarrass their program twice. The Philippines, who survived a nail biter in the quarter-finals, then ran away with their semi-final match and came out less than sharp in the final .

The first match of the day was 8 ball, which pitted former World 8 ball Champion Denis Orcollo (PHI) up against Liu Haitao(CHN). Orcollo was the obvious favourite in this match, however Haito gained an early two game lead after an uncharacteristic mistake by Orcollo, which he never relinquished winning 6-4. At the same time Biado and Corteza were up against young Chinese stars Dang and Wang. This was an 8 ball doubles match in which the Filipino's lost again 6-2.

In a perfect world for the Filipino team, they would have been the ones up 2-0 after the first two matches or at least 1-1 banking on a win from Orcollo. However their inability to execute in the key moments early on proved fatal for their Championship hopes as they went on to lose 4-2 overall to China (2).

Dang Ching Hu  Photos Courtesy Tai Chengzhe/China Foto Press & the WPA.

This comes as a major disappointment for Orcollo as he stated before this match that he was  really hoping his team could pull this win out. He wanted this for more than just the money this time, as he has seen a decline in sponsorship support for tournaments in the Philippines. In his mind a win here could have gotten his country the attention they needed to lure these sponsors back to pool.

For the Chinese, this is a prestigious moment as this marks the countries biggest international win for "American" style pool. For the China (2) squad of Liu Haitao, Dang Ching Hu, Wang Can, Fu Xiaofang, and Liu Shasha they have become instant hero's in the Chinese pool community for this accomplishment.

Finally I would like to congratulate team China (2) on their immense win and I look forward to next year when we will hopefully get to sweat out some team Canada matches.