5 November 2022
Pan Continental men’s B-Division play-offs confirmed
The seven-game round-robin programme of the men’s B-Division concluded on Saturday afternoon. Now, the four semi-finalists are left to compete for medals, and crucially, the one available promotion slot to next year’s A-Division.
An 8-5 win over Guyana in their last round-robin game on Friday afternoon gave Hong Kong a perfect seven wins and no losses record. This gave them top spot in the standings and a place in the semi-finals where, coincidentally, they will face Guyana again as Guyana completed their round-robin programme ranked fourth.
While Hong Kong emerged as clear leaders, the draw-shot challenge had to be used to rank the next three teams – Kazakhstan, India, and Guyana. All three of these teams finished on the same five wins, two loss records. All three had beaten one of the others and lost to one of the others, so this left the ranking among them to the cumulative pre-game draw shot challenge performances.
This procedure meant that Kazakhstan ranked second and India, third. The other semi-final will be between Kazakhstan and India.
While all these teams remain in the promotion frame, below them, Qatar finished fifth and Saudi Arabia ranked sixth. Kenya, with one win – achieved in the first all-African game against Nigeria at the start of the week, ranked seventh. This left win-less Nigeria in eighth place.
