As we see the end of the 2nd day and excitement is building for the afternoon session of day 3, we were able to get in touch with the two players representing South Africa as they get ready for their big match against Thailand at 12am SAT.
Speaking to Jason Theron he had the following message for all his supporters in South Africa: “Too all the South Africans back home thank you so much for your support and messages, we will do our best tomorrow and play our hearts out for the whole tournament.”
Kyle Akaloo added: “Hey guys, just wanted to say thanks from Jason and I here, for all the support, all the messages, all the tags, all the pictures on Facebook and other social media, it means a lot. Make sure you tune in and give us your full support while the match is going on as well. And keep it up guys”.
South Africa can be seen live on Supersport. The broadcast will start at 12am SAT, and we whish the boys from South Africa good luck in quite a tough match against their opponents from Thailand.
Moving on to the events from yesterday, we saw Poland in action in a very close encounter against Hong Kong, China. After the lead changed hands a few times, Poland (Mieszko Fortuński and Wojciech Szewczyk) was able to gain momentum beating Hong Kong, China (Lo Ho Sum and Robbie Capito) 7 – 4.
The next match in the afternoon we saw strong favourites Greece (Alexander Kazakis and Nikos Ekonomopoulos) taking on the underdogs Cyprus (Anthony Brabin and Christos Meligaliotis). After a strong start from Greece, we saw Cyprus gain a new lease on life and was able to fight back. Unfortunately falling short to the favourites. The final score was 7 – 4.
The last match of the afternoon we saw the second pair of Africans at the event, team Morocco (My Cherif Zine El Abidine and Imad lagnaoui) up against quarter finalists from last year, Netherlands (Niels Feijen and Marc Bijsterbosch).
Netherlands were the strong favourites in the match. From the start of the match Netherlands showed why. After an unforced error from Morocco, Netherlands were able to string together a few frames in a row. Speaking to My Cherif Zine El Abidine, he said: “Yes they play very well and we did not get many chances to play our game.”
The final score was 7 – 1 in favour of the Dutch.
The evening session saw the battle of Britain. Great Britain A (Jayson Shaw and Elliott Sanderson) the slight favourites and Great Britain B. (Imran Majid Chris Melling). Both pairs are new so it was a true test for both teams. After Shaw won the lag, he committed a foul on the break, from there it all went downhill for Great Britain A, they became the first seeded team to be knocked out losing 7 – 0 to Great Britain B.
The 2nd match of the evening we saw the toughest match to call in the evening session. We saw Estonia (Denis Grabe and Rainer Laar), take on Serbia (Andreja Klasović and Aleksa Pecelj. Estonia put up a strong performance last year making it all the way to the semi-finals. The match did not disappoint. The final score was 7 – 6 in favour of the team from Estonia in a close encounter.
The last match of day two we saw former two-time champions Austria (Albin Ouschan and Max Lechnertake) on rivals Finland (Mika Immonen and Jani Uski). The latter causing what one could say is another upset. Not simply because of the win, but how they won. Finland beat the Austrians with a whopping 1 – 7.
We hope that day 3 will be just as entertaining.