The Chinese women's volleyball team delighted home spectators on
Thursday with a resounding 3-0 win over the Dominican Republic at
the Beilun Cup four-nation invitational.
A boisterous crowd of approximately 3,000 did its best to
encourage China to the 25-15, 25-20 and 25-16 victory in just 64
minutes.
In the day's other game, an inconsistent Cuba staved off the
Netherlands' late rally to prevail in a five-set thriller.
China will meet Cuba Friday night to decide the winner of the
tournament.
Chinese head coach Chen Zhonghe made a change to his starting
line-up, replacing Zhou Suhong with veteran spiker Zhang Yuehong.
Zhang paid Chen's faith in her as the 32-year-old smashed five
kills to lead China's smooth attacking in the first set.
The Dominicans could find no answers to China's speedy attacks
and strong blocking in Set Two. After building up an advantage of
7-4, China kept a distance of at least four points and finally took
it 25-20.
With Zhang and Xu Yunli firing effectively from both flanks,
China looked a class of their own in the third set and led
throughout to seal the victory.
Zhang top-scored for China, dishing out 14 kills in her 15-point
haul. Xu had 10 points, from eight spikes, one block and one serve
ace.
"This was a perfect win, but the big margin doesn't necessarily
mean that we are in a class above the Dominican Republic," said
Zhou Suhong, China's captain.
Chen, who has been experimenting young players in recent
matches, said that the young generation have a lot of work to do
should they defend the Olympic title on home soil in 2008.
"We are still a technically raw team. If we don't make progress
in techniques, such as digging, we would not achieve good results
at next year's Olympic Games," he said.
Cosiris Argendi Rodriguez paced the Dominicans with 11 points,
all of them from spikes.
The duel between Cuba and the Netherlands was full of drama.
Cuba controlled the early stage of the match, and won the first two
sets 25-12, 25-22. But the Cubans looked like a different side in
the following two sets, with their power-packed attacking totally
ineffective, allowing the Dutch team to pull back by 25-22and
29-27.
As the score was tied at 13-all in the fifth-set tiebreak, Cuba
won two points in a row to finish off its European rival.
Cuba's head coach Calderon Felipe paid tributes to the Dutch
team.
"Although we won the match, it was the Dutch team who should
have come out as the winner. I think, both of the two teams are at
the same level," said Felipe.
Visser Sanna had a team-high 19 points for the Netherlands,
while Yanelis Santos Allengne was the leading scorer for Cuba with
18 points.
(Xinhua News Agency June 1, 2007)