China scrape a win and into the quarter-finals
DEFENDING champions China scraped into the quarter-finals after a hill-hill classic with Switzerland.
Fu Jian-bo and Li He-wen, who lifted the trophy in September 2007, sealed a dramatic 8-7 victory over the Swiss duo of Marco Tschudi and Dimitri Jungo.
China met Switzerland in the first last 16 match and both sides produced a high-quality encounter as the lead repeatedly changed hands.
Both teams enjoyed good success at the event last year as China won the competition and Switzerland defeated America before falling at the quarter-final stage.
China put out India in the first round of the 2008 tournament, while Switzerland overcame Hong Kong.
This contest was one of the best we had seen and Switzerland claimed the first rack before China won the next two.
A fluked 9-ball from Tschudi brought the score level at 2-2 but an illegal break were three balls were not potted or went past the headstring gave China the table for 3-2.
Li He-wen scratched on a break in the next and it was 3-3. But the Asians won the next two for 5-3.
A Dimitri Jungo 7-9 combination made it 5-4 before both sides shared the next two.
With the score now at 6-5 to China, a dry break from Fu helped make it 6-6 before there was a bizarre incident in the 13th rack.
Tschudi accidently feathered the cue ball before playing his attempted shot to give China ball-in-hand. It could have been a costly error but Li immediately missed a shot on the blue 2, although China still did enough to win that rack to move to the hill.
China registered a dry break in the 14th rack and Switzerland stayed composed to take it to the second hill-hill encounter of the day after Croatia had beaten Spain 8-7.
However, there was one final twist in the match when Tschudi's break came up dry and to make matters worse China then had a shot on the 1. The frustration showed as Tschudi hit the table and they knew they were in trouble.
Switzerland did not get back to the table and that dry break had proved to be their last shot of the tournament as China held their nerves to move into the quarter-finals.
