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Three Chinese Pairs Advance, Two Crash Out Table Tennis Quater-finals
Three Chinese pairs romped into the quarter-finals of the 21st Universiade table tennis mixed doubles event, while the other two suffered early exits on Sunday.
Top seeds Wang Liqin/Tie Yana, second seeds Zhang Yong/Zhang Yining and third seeds Liu Guozheng/Niu Jianfeng made their way to the final eight, all beating their rivals 2-0.
But the two unseeded Chinese combinations Xi Minjie/Yu Jingwei and Zhang Yingjie/Jiao Yongli were ejected from the quarter-finals.
Xi Minjie and Yu Jingwei beat Russian pair M.Thamsanga Aaron and D.Ayurdha 2-0 in the opening round before they met fourth seeds Chiang Peng-Lung and Chen Chiu-Tan from Chinese Taipei.
Chen Chiu-Tan's caused a lot of troubles to Xi/Yu with deceptive serves but the Chinese duo still managed 21-17 in the first set.
The Chinese Taipei pair scored three straight points on Chen's serves to make it 3-0 at a time, but allowed Xi/Yu to rally from 4- 10 behind to lead 19-17 and clinch three points in a row to win.
In the following set, Chiang/Chen found their rhythm as they led 7-1 and then made it 1-1 with 21-14. They never let the gap narrowed to four points and had a 18-10 lead at a time.
It was more of the same in the deciding set as the Chinese Taipei pair led throughout the game till the Chinese caught up at 17-16 from 10-15 behind. But again Chiang/Chen's determination saw them through 21-16.
"The Chinese pair are very strong but Chen Chiu-Tan had an excellent performance," said Chiang Peng-Lung after the match. " Her serves, as well as our receiving, are great. Chen played better than Yu Jingwei today."
In the singles event, the Chinese players, seeded or not, all reached the second round.
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