by Neha Aggarwal
In the first stage Group A matches, Chinese Taipei boys beat Finland and Argentina ‘B’ in impressive three-nil victory margins to emerge at the top position in their group and thus moved to the next stage, the quarter-finals.
Chinese Taipei, headed by Feng Yi-Hsin, Li Hsin-Yang and Tai Ming-Wei, is the top seeded team in the main draw and will now play against Portugal in the quarter-finals; the fixtures to be played on Saturday 20th May.
In Group ‘B’, matters were decided as per the seeding. Russia ‘A’, the top seeds, beat Switzerland and Spain ‘B’ both by three matches to nil. Russia ‘A’ secured the no.1 position in Group B, thus being placed in the second seeded position in the last eight. Russia ‘A’ will now play against Spain ‘A’ in the quarter-finals.
There were no surprises in the Group C, D, E and G as Japan ‘A’, Japan ‘B’, Germany and France finished top of their groups, thus qualifying for the knock-out stage.
In Group ‘F’, Spain ‘A’ secured the top spot beating both Netherlands and the mixed team from Thailand, Romania and Lithuania.
Additionally, in Group ‘H’, Portugal emerged the surprise winners as they knocked out Argentina ‘A’ and Spain ‘D’ , thereby securing the no.1 position in the group despite being placed at no.2 before the start of the matches.
France will play Japan ‘B’ and Germany will play Japan ‘A’, in the Junior Boys’ Team quarter-finals.
The Russian boys played well in the singles event and the challenge will now be to translate that success in the team matches. However, with a strong team from Chinese Taipei and Japan, it will be interesting to watch who makes it to the penultimate stage.
All quarter-finals matches will be played at 9.00am on Saturday 20th May.
