China sweeps Cuba in final round match of World Grand Prix – Volleyball news
The last match of the first day of the World Grand Prix was held between China and Cuba on Wednesday, June 27, 2012. The Chinese city that is currently playing host to the final round of the championship is Ningbo whereas the venue of the match was the Ningbo Beilun Gymnasium. The clash between the two sides took a total of one hour and nineteen minutes to reach its close by the end of which the home team was celebrating its dominating win.
China bagged three straight sets by the following scores: 25-22, 25-22 and 25-17.
The coach of the home team, Yu Juemin, shared his satisfaction at the win in the following manner, “This is our first match in the Grand Prix finals. Some of the Chinese players, especially our captain Wei, suffered from injury, which cause us much trouble on court. We are good at receiving, on the basis of these; our middle-players had very good performance today.”
On the other hand, the Cuban coach Juan Carlos Gala Rodriguez had the following views to express at the press conference, “We had a bad game today, made a lot of mistakes over the net, our middle-player didn't play well. On the contrary, the Chinese middle-players played very well today.”
The player who was able to score the most points in the match belonged to the Cuban side as it was Allegne Yanelis Santos who tallied 18 points on the score board.
The opening set of the match saw the Chinese take the lead at 9-6 but Cuba slowly worked their way up to reach a tie at 20-20. However, Cuba could not take the advantage as China sped on to a first set win at 25-22.
China was again leading the second set at 5-2 and extended it on to 8-4 before taking it further to 19-14. Cuba could not do much except trail behind as China headed for another win at 25-22.
The third set also started with a Chinese lead at 5-1 that was taken on to 15-9. Cuba was able to close in the gap at 15-11 but fell to making errors before they could swing things in their favour. As a result, the home team bagged the third set at 25-17.
The recent Chinese win attained by bagging three straight consecutive sets has enabled the home team to tally a total of three points in the final round of the championship by the end of day one while the Cubans have not earned a single point. The conclusion of the first day of the World Grand Prix saw China at the top of the rankings with Turkey in the second place and USA in the third.
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