SPORTS NEWS

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia /MONTSAME/ A women's team for Mongolia won a bronze medal in the 10x10 draughts in the 2nd World Mind Sports Games took place on August 9-23 in Lille, France. The Mongolian women's team comprised two draughts players B.Nandintsetseg and E.Mandakhnaran. This is the first ever medal won by Mongolia at the World Mind Sports Games. ** ** ** India and Syria won their 9-12 Classification games in contrasting manner on Friday to set up a play off for the ninth place. India overcame a forgettable first quarter to beat Indonesia 67-53 (Box scores) after Syria had held control through out to beat Bahrain 80-70 (Box scores). Indonesia will take on Bahrain for the 11th place. The play-offs are scheduled for Saturday. For the record, Syria had beaten India 67-59 (Box scores) in a Group E Second Round earlier in the competition here. Indonesia and Bahrain have played in this competition before, with the former having won Group C Prelim Round game 72-67 (Box scores). Palpreet Singh Brar of India was as usual the leader of India's win, the 204-cm shooting a 60% rate on the paint. Rakesh pulled down 14 rebounds to go with his 8 points. A Syrian player Mahmoud Trab's 24 points with 8 rebounds and 2 assists was the highlight of Syria's win. Mohammed Ali Obaysi had 14 points and Ockba Baghajati contributed 14 points. Ali Shukralla and Hasan Ali Sayed each had 20 points for Bahrain. Mashahiro Narita reeled in seven three-pointers in all in Japan's quarterfinal game against Chinese Taipei on Friday. But the most important and decisive of them all came with 22 seconds left on the clock in the protracted battle of wits between the East Asian teams, which took Japan to a 68-67 win a place in the semifinals. Japan thus made a comeback to the last four stage - the 10th time they have done so in the history of the competition - having failed to do so in the 21st FIBA Asia Championship at Sana'A (Yemen) in 2010. Narita's effort of 31 points with a 12/29 shooting in field overall was not only a game-high for Japan came in a game when their spearhead Yuta Watanabe returned only 2 points. Kazushi Mori had 15 points and Shuto Terazono 11 points. Fan Shih-en was the only Taipei player to score in the double-digits with all his 18 points coming in the first three quarters. For the first two quarters of the game the scales tilted to one side firmly - one side in each period - but post the half-time break neither sought a quarter nor gave any. Japan had opened the scoring the game and then raked up a double-digit lead in the first five minutes to look strong at the end of the first quarter. Narita had accounted for a dozen points in the opening period. But Taipei returned the favor in kind - an 8-0 run helping them bridge the gap before Fan Shih-en's drive in the lane leveled the scores for the first time in the game. Chiu Jih-Cheng and Huang Hung-han each scored 6 points to as Fan led Taipei's resurgence with 8 points in the second quarter. Then came the protracted battle which Narita clinched in Japan's favor. Japan coach Sato Hisao was happy that the team won, but was far from satisfied in the manner in which it was achieved. “I think Narita was brilliant as I had expected, but Watanabe left a lot desired. I'm not worried about his form, I'm sure he's just had an off-day and he'll be back soon. Just that he didn't play as we had expected,” Hisao added. Hisao's opposite number Yen Hsin-shu was lost for words. “I can say nothing. We made too many mistakes. Our guards were just too timid and slow to react,” he said about Narita's long-ranger which sealed the issue. “We did alright, but against good teams the difference between winning and losing depends upon how well we perform under pressure. It all depends upon how we play in the crunch moments,” he added. For the first time in this competition, defending gold medalists China started a game with both their star giants Wang Zhelin and Zhou Qi. That was just about the piece of interest as the nine-time gold medalists went about their business without much ado carving out a 76-33 win against Saudi Arabia. The win earned China a place in the semifinals against Japan. In a show of all-round superiority, only one China player scored in the double-digits with coach Wang Huaiyu concentrating more on rotating Wang Zhelin and Zhou Qi with the other giant Dai Huaibo - using two of them at the same time. “We were looking more options in defense. Our target was to limit them (Saudi Arabia) for as less than possible. I think we achieved that,” Wang Huaiyu added. Yang Jinmeng's 11 points, along with 6 rebounds, was the highest for China. B.Khuder