Philippines vs Great Britain for World Team Championship

Teams are now decided for the finals of the first World Team Championships in Hannover, Germany.

In the first semi-final on Saturday, it was Team Philippines who played against the young-guns from Russia. And it was Juniors World Champion Ruslan Chinakov and his partner Roman Pruchay who secured the first point for Russia by winning the 8-Ball doubles against Ronnie Alcano/Dennis Orcullo. But just a few minutes later, the score was tied as Marlon Manalo and Warren Kiamco beat Konstantin Stepanov/Egor Plishkin.

The 9-Ball singles saw easy wins by the Phillipines as well as the 10-Ball match between Alcano and Chinakov. So with a final result of 4:1, Team Philippines made it to the finals.

Their opponent in the finals will be Great Britain. The quintet with the two world champs Daryl Peach and Darren Appleton had to deal with the surprising team from Greece. And after the doubles where both of the team made one point it looked like fans were in for another close match. Both teams were familiar with winning by shootout as it was the UK team who win the unbelievable shootout against China on Friday and the day before it was Greece who defeated Team USA 13:11 in a very exciting shootout.

All ideas of a shootout in this match were forgotten when Team Great Britain shifted their games into a higher gear and celebrated two wins to make it 3:1. So just one more point was needed.

In 10-Ball, Peach was unable to win his match, which left Darren Appleton to end the suspense. The former World Champion took early advantage over Evangelos Vettas and was always 2 or 3 games ahead en route to pocketing the final 10-ball for the victory.

Sunday will see the final at 3.00 p.m. CET. Watch out for the livestream on www.cueball-vision.de. It's really worth watching.

Results and Livescore: www.wpapoolonline.com

Livestream: www.cueball-vision.de

Official website: www.wtc-2010.com

Official pictures: www.touch-magazine.net