The Japanese women on Wednesday confirmed their position as group winners, beating a tenacious France at the world team table tennis championships.
The Japanese squad of Sayaka Hirano, Ai Fukuhara and Hiroko Fujii won the hard-fought battle 3-1, only one day after they burst into tears on fighting off a dogged South Korea.
They get a bye in the next round and will directly cruise into the quarter-finals.
The first match between Japan and France was a lopsided affair, with 19th-ranked Sayaka having little difficulty in finishing off 73rd-ranked Xian Yi Fang 3-0.
But ninth-ranked Ai came up against unexpectedly staunch defense of 114th-ranked Carole Grundisch, who rallied from two sets down to take the encounter 3-2.
Then a seesaw battle was on show between Hiroko and Aurore Dessaint. The 45th-ranked Japanese won 3-2, leaving it to her teammate Sayaka to finish the job, with a 3-2 victory over Carole.
"My opponent is formidable," Ai said in a modest tone after the match. She added through an interpreter that she did not know she would lose the match.
On Tuesday, the 20-year-old girl helped her team beat a fired-up South Korea, a major threat to Japan, in a closely-fought battle that lasted three hours.
Japan, the winner of Group D, had recorded a series of stunning wins over the Netherlands, Italy and the Czech Republic. China, Singapore and Hong Kong, China are also group winners.
Source: Xinhua
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