Lower half end ranking decided
On the second last day of the 2011 World Championships korfball in China, the lower half of the final ranking is decided without any surprises, with Gemany ending at ninth place and South Africa last.
The day starts with Wales and South Africa trying to avoid becoming last. South Africa is most likely to end last and the whole game this is visible in the score. Wales leads most of the time, with South Africa leveling every now and then. Wales takes a three goal lead at 5-8 which it keeps until half time, 7-10. The second half waits a long time for goals, with 8-11 taking eight minutes and 10-11 another eight. From that moment on, the margin switches between one and two goals until South Africa scores 13-13 with about two minutes to go. Ruth Campbell scores what turns out to be the winner shortly after for Wales, giving them a 13-14 victory.
India and Hong Kong play for places thirteen and fourteen. Here it is clear the whole game that India will win, with them securing victory in the first half and holding on to it well in the second. India starts with a 3-0 lead and keeps the margin to 8-5, then they increase the margin to five at half time, 10-5. The second half they know to get to a seven goal margin from 16-9 to 20-13 three minutes before time. When it appears the squads are all out of scoring power, a penalty in the last minute for Hong Kong brings the final score to 20-14, bringing thirteenth place to big India and the total score for top scorer Dahiya to thirty-three goals. This result is an improvement for India compared to last year's Asia-Ociania Championships, where they are fifth and Hong Kong is fourth.
Host county China meets Australia for places eleven and twelve. The first ten minutes show a tight game where the advantage switches between the squads. An Australian time out in the eleventh minute is well chosen by the coach, but it only is the prelude to the Chinese holding on to the lead the rest of the game. They go from 6-5 right after the time-out to 11-7. Australia fights back to 11-10, China answers that to put 13-11 on the board at half time. The second half starts with China missing a penalty and then securing a five goal margin, from 17-12 to 19-14. Australia brings that back to two at 20-18, China tops that with 22-18 and then three or four goals is the margin until the 23-20 final score. This brings China eleventh place, a decent improvement over the last place in 2007, and some work to go to reach the top eight in 2015, a place they are surely able to reach with another four years of development.
China's top scorer of the tournament, Liang, gets a total of forty goals. With him being just twenty-one, he is sure to progress the coming years. The second most scoring player, Wang, is 25 and scores thirty goals. Their most scoring female player is Yan Zhang, just twenty-three and good for twenty-one goals, the most scoring female player with one day of matches for the top eight countries to go. She scored consistantly in all but one of the games and put in seven goals in the game against India as her top scoring performance.
The final game of the day is Poland against Germany. Of these two European neighbours, the expectation is a fairly easy win by Germany. Poland is keen on proving the expectations wrong and comes a long way the first twenty minutes, when they manage to come level with the Germans three times, at 3-3, 4-4 and 7-7. It is then that Germany gets a grip on the lead, going to 7-9 to 8-11 at half time. The second half shows more control from Germany, when they quickly go to 9-14, which is the base for the final victory. From then on they keep this margin right on to the final score of 18-23. So Germany gets its expected ninth place. Looking at the top scorers, the Polish have their usual two with Zak scoring seven and Rubinowski six in this game. For Germany it's Käsbach that scores five and of the starting eight everybody else scores two or three, making it a strong win by all players. Zak and Rubinowski do so well this tournament that at the moment they lead the top scorer ranking with 49 and 43 goals. With Nick Janssens (41), Cleyman (39) from Belgium and Wu (39) from Taiwan close and having one game left, the ranking may shift a bit, but Zak is likely to be in this tournament's top 3 when it's finished.