TT World Championships: China stay unbeaten, tough battle for Sweden and Germany at Busan

Busan (South Korea), Feb 18 : China racked up its third consecutive victory in both mens and womens events, while Sweden and Germany went through full-set thrillers to keep their campaign rolling at the ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals here on Sunday.

In the mens event, Chinas top male player Fan Zhendong faced only slight resistance from Bence Majoros in the opening match, securing an 11-7 win in the first game before dominating with 11-4, 11-5 victories.

Liang Jingkun powered China to a two-set lead after getting past Tamas Lakatos 11-6, 11-8, 11-5.

Lin Gaoyuan, playing his first match in Busan, initially lost the lead to Adam Szudi 12-10, but rebounded to win 11-6, 11-2, 11-7, ensuring the defending champions completed their mission, reports Xinhua.

Sweden and Germany both faced tough challenges, pushing through to maintain their unbeaten records in the mens category.Anton Kallberg clinched the decisive victory for Sweden against Hong Kong, China, with a 3-2 scoreline, and Dimitrij Ovtcharov led Germany to a narrow win over Kazakhstan, also by 3-2."The most important thing was to win this match for the team victory.Everybody won the match, and we did our job well," commented Germanys 10th-ranked penholder Qiu Dang.

World No.9 Tomokazu Harimoto picked up two wins as Japan dispatched Chinese Taipei 3-1, while South Korea eased past Chile in straight sets.Felix and Alexis Lebrun led France to a 3-0 win against Austria for its third win in a row.

On the womens side, Sun Yingsha reigned supreme in her rallies with Maria Xiao, the current highest-ranked player in Spains squad at world No.60, triumphing 11-3, 11-5, 11-4 to earn China a quick lead.

Chen Meng rebounded from an 11-8 loss in the first game to come up trumps 11-4, 11-3, 11-5 against Sofia Zhang Xuan, putting the titleholder further ahead.

"When I led in the first game, my serve was not that good," explained Chen."But any situation during the game was within my preparation.

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Chen Xingtong emerged victorious 11-7, 11-6, 11-4 over Elvira Rad to close out Chinas straight-set win.

"From a technical aspect, my performance was fine.After building a comfortable lead, sometimes I might want to play more aggressively, and the opponent also had some quality shots," commented Chen Xingtong.

In a highly anticipated duel on Table 1, South Korea took advantage of Jeon Ji-hees two points to outlast Puerto Rico 3-1, while the eighth-ranked home favourite Shin Yu-bin fell in straight games to Adriana Diaz, who sat three places behind her in the world rankings."It wasnt much different from the games I played before.

It feels like I wasnt very creative with my plays.Although Ive played against her before, it was not like she played extraordinarily differently.She just prepared well," explained Shin.

Jeon made up for Shins defeat as she swept Diaz 3-0 in the fourth set to bag another victory for the hosts."I lost to Adriana Diaz before, and she has a very high-ranking stat.

Now that Im going against stronger players, I am really into my competition mode," commented Jeon.

Japan continued to show why theyre considered title contenders, dismantling South Africa with a combined scoreline that saw Miyuu Kihara, Miu Hirano, and Hina Hayata lose only 15 points across nine games.

Down 2-0 against Luxembourg, Bruna Alexandre led Brazils charge, getting the better of Tessy Gonderinger 3-1, before her teammates Bruna Takahashi and Giulia Takahashi also chipped in to turn the tide.

"We never give up if were down 2-0 or Im down 2-0.Were always trying to win and were very proud of ourselves," said Bruna Takahashi."Bruna [Alexandre] gave us one chance to come back and were very happy that we could use it."

China look forward to their final group matches on Monday, facing Croatia in the mens event and Hungary in the womens competition.

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