The Asian Youth Championships are being held again after four years, and today they entered the knockout stage of the team competition. In the quarterfinals, which just finished in the afternoon, the Chinese youth team lost to Japan by one to three and unfortunately missed the semifinals.
A total of 14 teams took part in the Asian Youth Championship team competition, with China in Group A, alongside Indonesia and Vietnam. In the group stage, China beat Vietnam 5-0 in the first match, but defeated Indonesia 1-4 in the second match to advance to the quarterfinals in second place in the group.
After the second draw of the group stage, China met Japan in the eight to four match. This quarterfinal match started at 10:00 a.m. today and did not end until 3:30 p.m. Each match was played in three games. In the first mixed doubles match, China's Zhu Yijun/Huang Kexin reversed four consecutive points at 17-19 in the deciding game to beat their opponents 23-21., 16-21, 21-19, first pulling out a win for their team.
In the next women's singles battle, China sent 16-year-old Xu Wenjing to face the previous World Junior Championships women's singles champion and 17-year-old Tomohana Miyazaki. After three hard-fought games, Xu Wenjing lost 11-21. 21-19, 17-21 to her opponent, and the two teams were tied 1-1.
In the third game, China's Hu Zhe'an led the next city 21-19, but then was rushed by his opponent to Ben Yu. , winning two consecutive matches 21-14. After 81 minutes of hard-fought men's singles, Japan took a 2-1 lead.
In the fourth match, China sent Li Huazhou/Zhang Wenxiao, who were defeated 19-21., 21-13, 15-21, and the Chinese youth team was defeated by Japan 1-3, regretting that they did not reach the quarterfinals.
In the other three quarterfinal matches, Chinese Taipei beat South Korea 3-0, Thailand beat Malaysia 3-0 and Indonesia beat India 3-1. According to the schedule, the semifinals will be held at 5 p.m. today with Thailand playing Indonesia and Japan playing Chinese Taipei, with the final to be held tomorrow.
The lineup of the Chinese youth team for this Asian Youth Championship was very different from last year's participation in the World Youth Championship. Most of the main players did not have the experience of participating in last year's World Junior Championships team competition, so the weakness of inexperience was clearly exposed in the matches. For example, in the group stage against Indonesia and today against Japan, China failed to capitalize on key points in many matches until the final crucial stage.
The Chinese team will need to adjust their mood and condition in time for the individual events starting the day after tomorrow.
