Japan remains top in Asia

FINAL DAY – ACWC 2019 Jakarta

Defending champions Japan rubber stamped their authority in Asia, when they went to win the Asia Cup Women championship title for the fifth consecutive time and seventh time in the 11^th editions, defeating China 9-2 in six innings in the final which ended this afternoon at the GBK Softball Stadium in Jakarta.

After battling for one hour and forty minutes, Japan’s Eri Yamada (No 11) home run hit clinched victory after the hard fought battle.

It was China who drew first blood when they had one run in the third inning, before Japan had two runs in the fifth and four in the sixth to clinch victory.

China did their best to dethrone Japan, but in the end it was not enough to subdue the superiority of Japan.

But China certainly gave a better performance than their Group stage meeting where they had gone down 12-0 in five innings too.

Japan’s superiority was further under lined when the bagged three out of six individual awards winning the Most Valuable Player (Eri Yamada), Best Pitcher (Missaki Katsumata) and Most Stolen Base (Mikiko Iguchi).

Philippines’ who missed out a World Cup ticket, had some consolation when Angeline Ursabia picked up two individual awards – Best Hitter and Best Slugger).

Chinese Taipei’s Chen Chia Yi picked up the Most Runs Batted award.

Chinese Taipei on the hand also booked the third spot for the World Cup in 2021 when they defeated Philippines 10-0 in four innings under the run ahead rule, in the third placing match earlier.

Under the run ahead rule, teams will be declared winners before the end seven innings, if they are ahead by 15 runs in the third inning, 10 runs in the fourth, seven runs after five innings onwards.

It was a close tie when no runs were made in the first two innings, but in the third inning when first base Cassandra Decker Hailey fumbled to catch from Shih Chieh Pei’s hit, which allowed the latter to her run to second base, it opened the floodgates for Chinese Taipei.

Chinese Taipei went to have five runs in the third innings and collected another five in the fourth inning to seal the game, leaving Philippines utterly disappointed, as the losing finalist at the last edition, had so much hopes to at least qualify for the World Cup.

Philippines probably consoled themselves that they have made the cut for the Olympics qualifier.

Besides Japan who qualified automatically as host of the 2020 Olympics, six top teams also qualified for the Olympic qualifier in September in Shanghai. They are China, Chinese Taipei, Philippines, Korea, Indonesia and Hong Kong.

They will join Australia and New Zealand in the Asia/Oceania qualifier in Shanghai from Sept 24-29.

The eight teams will be drawn in two groups and the top two teams will advance to a Super Round. The winner will become the last team to the six-team softball competition at the Games.

Those who missed the cut were Thailand, Singapore and India.

RESULTS:

FINAL: Japan 9 China 2

Third placing: Chinese Taipei 10 Philippines 0

AWARDS

Most Valuable Player: Eri Yamada (Japan)

Best Pitcher: Missaki Katsumata (Japan)

Best Hitter: Angeline Ursabia (Philippines)

Best Slugger: Angeline Ursabia (Philippines

Most Stolen Base: Mikiko Iguchi (Japan)

Most Runs Batted  (RBI): Chen Chia Yi (Chinese Taipei)