Taiwan won the men's team silver in the Asian Table Tennis Championships on Friday, Taiwan time. The deciding matches were played against Team China on Thursday night in Astana, Kazakhstan where the championships were held.
Taiwan’s Lin Yun-Ju (林昀儒), Kao Cheng-ju (高承睿), and Huang Yan-chen (黃彥誠) competed hard in best-of-five rounds versus Chinese players Liang Jingkun (梁靖崑), Lin Shidong (林詩棟) and China's top-ranked player Wang Chuqin (王楚欽).
In the first match, 19-year-old Kao lost to Wang, 0-3. Next, Lin Yun-Ju went up against Lin Shidong, who had recently won the World Table Tennis Grand Smash Title, in his fourth match of the day, unfortunately losing 1-3. Down two matches, Taiwan sent out Huang who won Taiwan’s only match point of the night versus Liang. It was especially notable given that Huang is ranked 70th in the world, while Liang is ranked 5th. Lin came back again for the final match of the night, fighting hard against China’s champion player Wang, but lost 2-3.
This marks the third consecutive year that Team Taiwan has won silver, tying for the best record in the team’s history. Taiwan’s men's team has won a total of five silver medals at the Asian Championships, with the first two in 2000, and 2003.