Trios miss semis boat despite rolling with the punches

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s Adrian Ang, Tun Hakim Hasnul Azam and Rafiq Ismail put up a gallant fight on the second day of the trios event in the Men’s World Championships but it was not good enough for them to qualify for the semi-finals.

They tried to make up for their poor performance on Thursday by raising their game to score a total of 1,879 pins to finish third in the second block. In the first block, they had amassed 1,771 pins.

With the combined scores of 3,650, they moved five rungs from 24th to finish 19th.

Syafiq Ridhwan Abdul Malek, Alex Liew and Timmy Tan also gave a good account of themselves to move from the 72nd spot to 40th with a com- bined score of 3,453.

The top-four trios through to the semi-finals were South Koreans Park Jong-woo, Koo Seong-hoi, Kim Kyung-min (3,960); Indonesians Billy Muhammad Islam, Hardy Rachmadian, Ryan Leonard Lalisang (3,918): Sweden’s Mattias Wetterberg, Jesper Svensson, Martin Larsen (3,883); and the United States’ EJ Tackett, Kyle Troup, Andrew Anderson (3,881).

Skipper Alex said the keglers read the lanes better and made the right adjustments.

“I was struggling to repeat the shot that I want. I’ve to adapt better in the upcoming events,” said the southpaw.

Team manager Maradona Chok said the bowlers did well to come back and regained much-needed confidence for today’s team event.

“We just need to continue making good shots and hope we don’t get caught in the transition (changing of the lanes),” he said.

In the team of five, Malaysia will be represented by Rafiq, Adrian, Tun Hakim, Syafiq Ridhwan Abdul Malek and Timmy.