World Gateball Championship 2010: Knock-out phase

Total dominance by Chinese teams, the strongest Japanese teams (including the defending champions Osaka Midori) were mostly bundled out early in the knock-out phase.

The table below outlines the progress of group winners through the knock-out phase

.	Number of Teams	Group winners	Quarter-finalists	Semi-finalists	Finalists
China	16	15 (increadible)	7	4	Winner: Fujian Runner-up: Yunnan Liming
Japan	15	5	1	-
Taiwan	11	1	-	-
Hong Kong	5	1	-	-

Brazil

Note: Full results from the knock-out phase are available at http://www.gateball.or.jp/jguweb/wgu/competition/pdf/10_wag_03.pdf

The matches I watched in the knockout phase were:

Guandong Songang (China) defeated Hong Kong Team Number 1 (14-11). This match was decided on the last turn of the match, Hong Kong (who won Canberra’s group) played a strong match and was ahead for much of the match.

TKE (Japan) defeated Hiebei Langfang (China) (15-13); this match was memorable for two reasons, which I’ll outline. The Chinese team dominated the first 20 minutes, TKE had two chances for double touches which they were unable to convert and the Chinese team built a lead until they started making some errors while attacking TKE’s balls close to the line. As the Japanese team swarmed over to gate 2 the Chinese team started delaying the match by (on their outballs turn) purposefully hitting hard into inballs (a foul) to cause a delay in the match while the referees retrieved and returned the balls to their original positions. This was done on two occasions and goes against everything the tournament stood for. I believe stronger action by the referees was warranted. The second event of significance was the final turn of the match by the TKE captain, this turn scored 8 points (including 4 balls sparked through gates) to win the match to the enthusiastic cheers of the Japanese contingent.

Fujian (China) defeated TKE (Japan) (19-11) the quality of matches was now extremely high with hitting accuracy, consistency and tightness to the lines of a very high standard.

Yunnan Liming (China) defeated Zhenger Primary School (China) 19-11 – crowd favourties Zhenger primary School (comprising of Chinese boys I would estimate aged between 15 – 20 years old) couldn’t get going in this match. Crowds at this semi-final stage were now very large with viewing points at a premium. I would estimate about a thousand people created a great atmosphere.

The Final

Fujian (China) defeated Yunnan Liming (China) (9-7). Crowds were kept back by a barrier which obscured some of the court tight to the lines however allowed more of the crowd to view the final, I estimate around 1,500 people watched the final. The match was tight where Yunnan’s on-court dominance was not converted into points. Fujian were able to turn the match late with a scintillating 15m ‘maverick’ shot which swung the game and gave them the tight win despite a number of tense moments in the final two minutes.