HONG KONG—The Hong Kong team narrowly missed the knock-out stage of the men’s pairs discipline and remained empty-handed after completion of the first four events at the 2016 World Championships at Christchurch, New Zealand.
The men’s pairs of James Po and Tony Cheung started well winning all 3 games on the 1st day beating Fiji, Canada and Cyprus and were sitting at the top of the table.
On day 2 they won against Singapore, but lost to England and Australia, dropping the team to 4th place.
On the last day of the roundrobin stage Hong Kong needed to get into top 3 of their group to qualify for the knock-out stage. They beat 3rd-place Scotland 22-18 to maintain their slim hope. However they lost 11-18 in a tight game against Jersey in the penultimate game to trail Scotland by 2 points but went on to defeat a strong South Africa team 23-11 in their last game.
Despite Scotland losing to England in their last game, the Hong Kong pair were only level on points with Scotland but dropped to 4th on shot difference.
Scotland went on to beat Malaysia to enter the semi-finals but were defeated by the eventual winners Brett Wilkie and Aaron Wilson from Australia.
For the women’s fours, the results were almost identical as the men’s pairs team, but in reverse. They lost their 3 games on day 1, but won the 1st and 3rd games on day 2. By this time their hopes of progressing was over but they went on to win 2 of the 3 games on the last day to finish 6th in the group.
All members of the Hong Kong team have been in action this week, with the men’s singles and fours, and women’s pairs and triples still aiming to end the 28 years medal drought at the World Championship.
The finals will be played this Saturday and Sunday, Dec 10 and 11, and will be available live online. For details please refer to the official website at www.worldbowls2016.com.
This weekend in Lawn Bowls
The Triples league resumes this Saturday Dec 10 with matches starting at 2:30pm at all greens in Hong Kong.
Claudius Lam is an officer of the Hong Kong Lawn Bowls Association
