Chinese women's team take gold in table tennis

The Chinese women cemented its tight grasp on the table tennis gold at the Asian Games on Tuesday after beating arch-rival Japan 3-0 in a sold-out final to claim its fifth consecutive team title in Hangzhou.

China's invincible trio of Sun Yingsha, Chen Meng and Wang Manyu, the world's top-three players, proved too strong to beat for Japan's Hina Hayata, Miu Hirano and Miwa Harimoto, who had put on a gusty fight in front of a packed crowd at the Gongshu Canal Sports Park Gymnasium to push their respective opponents to concede at least a game in each of the three matches.

However, it was not enough for the Japanese women to overthrow China's perennial dominance in the sport.

"It's always a pleasure to compete against table tennis superpower China. We lost most of the times, through. Our players did their best today, putting on a close fight against Team China and a good performance for the crowd," said the Japanese women's team coach Watanabe Takehiro.

"The Chinese wall however remains too thick and too high for us to climb over with. It's so hard for us to beat China at the moment. We still need to keep working hard," he said.

World No 1 Sun got China off to a flying start in the best-of-three final showdowns by beating Hayata, 11-6, 12-10, 8-11, 11-9, in the first singles match.

Japan's 16th-ranked second in singles with Hirano coming within just three points of stunning China's defending Olympic champion Chen in the second match, before losing 12-10, 8-11, 7-11, 11-8, 11-5 to the experienced Chen, who came back strong in the fifth game.

After dropping the first game against 15-year-old Harimoto, Wang sealed the team victory by winning three games in a row to send the teenager packing. The score was 6-11, 11-4, 11-7, 13-11.

Team China head coach Ma Lin said it was the collective effort that helped China fend off the surging Japanese challenge again and secure its fifth gold medal in the team event since the 2006 Doha Asiad.

"It's the traditional solidarity of Chinese table tennis team that kept us winning all the time," said Ma. "This was probably the toughest competition we've ever had against Team Japan in recent years. The Japanese players really pushed us to the limit."

"I think we will see each other again very soon in the final of another major event. Hopefully we could improve on tonight and deliver better performances," she added.