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Andi and Koko advance to quarterfinals

Indonesian beach volleyball aces Andy Ardiyansah and Koko Prasetyo Darkuncoro won their second preliminary match against Japan’s Shinya Inoue and Yoshiumi Hasegawa at the Asian Games in Guangzhou on Thursday evening, topping pool C

Matheos Viktor Messakh (The Jakarta Post)
GUANGZHOU, China
Fri, November 19, 2010

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Andi and Koko advance to quarterfinals

I

ndonesian beach volleyball aces Andy Ardiyansah and Koko Prasetyo Darkuncoro won their second preliminary match against Japan’s Shinya Inoue and Yoshiumi Hasegawa at the Asian Games in Guangzhou on Thursday evening, topping pool C.

In a match attended by 1,800 spectators, the South East Asian (SEA) Games champions needed only 36 minutes to defeat the Japanese 21-19, 21-15.

“We felt better than at yesterday’s match. Yesterday we needed quite some time to adjust because we had never played Yemen’s team before, but today we played a team we had met in the current [Badminton] Asian Tour and Asia Pacific Tour. So it was easier to adjust,” Koko said after the match.

“Winning this match is very important to us because we are number one in our pool and we don’t have to play the Chinese team in the round of 16,” Koko said.

Koko and Andy, who won SEA Games gold twice together, didn’t expect the draw that put them in the evening match, as it was hard for them to adjust to the weather.

“The temperature was quite low and also we had problems with the light.”

The temperature during the Thursday evening game was 24 degrees and the humidity was 50 percent.

The draw for the quarterfinals round will be decided after the completion of the other round of 16 matches on Friday.

Although Koko and Andy were among the lowest-ranked players in the games, the 2007 and 2008 Asian Champions made the most of their teamwork to overcome their taller opponents.

“Our teamwork made us more confident and it can trick our opponents,” 1.85-meter-tall Koko said.

Indonesia’s second pair of competitors, Dian Putra Santosa and Ade Chandra Rachmawan, however, lost to Oman’s Khalifa Al Jabri and Abdullah Al Alrajhi 17-21, 19-21 in pool H in the men’s preliminaries.

“This was our second match at the Asian Games. I think we performed well in this match, especially our blocking,” said Abdullah Al Alrajhi after the match.

“The [Indonesian team] was a very good team. But in this match we didn’t give them a chance. We focused on [Ade Chandra] Rachmawan as he seemed a little bit tired and we believe that was the weakness of the Indonesian team in this match,” Al Alrajhi said.

Dian and Ade have to win 2-0 against Sri Lanka’s PMJ Mahesh and BDR Wasantha to advance to the quarterfinals.

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