Chinese too strong for Thais

Title-hotshots Guangdong Evergrande of China breezed past Thailand League champions Idea Khonkaen in straight sets on Friday to take on old foes Bo Tong Gang of DPR Korea in the semi-finals of the 14th Asian Women’s Club Volleyball Championship.

Legendary coach Lang Ping’s unbeaten Evergrande, who have yet to lose a set to their respective rivals in the top-flight one-week, eight-team tournament, spent one hour thrashing Idea Khonkaen 25-12 25-15 25-14.

The Chinese team fielded a formidable starting line-up, which included imported spikers Katarzyna Ewa Skowronska Dolata of Poland and Italian Carolina Del Pilar. Evergrande, second-placed at this season’s Chinese League, were additionally strengthened by the hard-attacking Zhou Yuan and the 195cm Xu Yunli, the tournament’s tallest player.  Following the lop-sided win over Thailand’s Idea Khonkaen, the Chinese team were due to take on Bo Tong Gang, the team they had already beaten 3-0 in the pool round-robin preliminaries earlier, in yesterday’s semi-finals.

After the match, Idea Khonkaen’s head coach Banjong Sombat expressed satisfaction over his team’s improved game. “I’m very happy with my players’ performance. We played much better than the previous matches which saw the Chinese team remain on their starting line-up. They did not change any player in the match against us. As far as I’m concerned, we played more consistently in this match.

“Of the three sets, I think we did our best in the second set. We played with more determination and guts. Setter Pornpun Guedpard looked to be a dominant force in my team in this match as she learned well how to set the ball for team-mates to attack effectively. “If we happen to take on hosts Vietnam’s Lienviet Postbank in the classification match, I think it must be a good, tough match. We have played before and knew each other quite well. Whoever does better will win that match. We will try our best to avenge our loss in the preliminaries,” he said.

Meanwhile, Japan’s PFU Blue Cats, Kazakhstan’s Zhetyssu and DPR Korea’s Bo Tong Gang all join China’s Guangdong Evergrande in the the semi-finals.

On Friday, aside from Idea Khonkaen’s letdown, the other three losing teams were Taipei, who were beaten 18-25 17-25 16-25 by Blue Cats, Iran’s Giti Pasand went down to Zhetyssu 7-25 14-25 9-25 and hosts Lienviet Postbank lost a hard-fought five-set thriller to Bo Tong Gang 21-25 12-25 26-24 25-20 8-15.

In the semi-finals, Evergrande were due to take on Bo Tong Gang and Zhetyssu challenge PFU Blue Cats.

Relegated to play in the 5th-8th classification round were Thailand’s Idea Khonkaen against hosts Lienviet Postbank, the team they lost to 2-3 in the preliminaries, and Taipei against Giti Pasand.