Shanghai, Paykan cruise into semis of volleyball championship
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Shanghai of China defeated Myanmar's AWC 3-1?in Zhenjiang?on Friday in a quarterfinal match of the 2010 Asian men's club volleyball championship.
Also on Friday, Iran's defending champion Paykan whitewashed Sports Center 1 from Vietman 3-0 to book another semifinal berth of the tournament.
Both Shanghai and AWC competed fiercely for every point from the very early minutes of the opening set. However, Shanghai was more powerful after tying at 8-8. Led by Fang Yingchao, Shanghai launched a 5-0 run to control the game and closed the first set with 25-19.
Shanghai scored first in the second set but AWC soon answered with a 3-0 run. As two teams tied at 20-20, Wang Zhiteng scored three points to help Shanghai take the set with 25-23.
AWC pulled out all efforts to counter-attack in the third set as they sent Ye Myint on the court. The 38-year-old Ye helped the AWC team set up a 12-6 cushion and a determined AWC took the set at 25-18.
The fourth set is no surprise. AWC managed to follow their rivals 23-24, but Li Chunhui from China had a successful block to add the decisive point to his team, 25-23 in favor of Shanghai.
Fang led the Shanghai team with 24 points, including four aces and Li had 21.
Paykan had a much easier match on Friday as they beat Sports Center 1 from Vietnam 25-13, 25-20 and 25-19 in 62 minutes.
Paykan won 44 points in 74 attempt spikes while Sports Center 1 had 33 out of 75 attempts.
Mojtaba Shaban and Farhad Ghaemi contributed 13 points each for Paykan.
Huynh Van Tuan scored 12 for Sports Center 1 and Ngo Van Kieu added 11.
In other matches played on Friday, Japan Panasonic Panthers outclassed Federbrau of Thailand 3-1 (25-17, 20-25, 25-22 and 25-22), Qatar's Al-Abrabi defeated Almaty of Kazakhstan 3-1 (25-19, 23-25, 25-23 and 25-17).
Shanghai will face Al-Arabi in the semifinal of the tournament on Saturday while Paykan shall take on Panthers.
