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I think the greater concern is if they can survive to even meet China with the proposed format of going into every stage with only four matches that they have any chances of winning. Call me pessimistic but Mizutani/Niwa seems like a recipe for disaster not because they are both lefties but mainly that neither has killer shots so their pairing still retains their individual weakness. Again, I have serious reservations about potentially starting every stage with a loss. That said, if they do manage to reach the finals after surmounting all the difficulties along the way, it could do wonders to their resilience.
Hmm, are teams allowed to play different doubles pairings from match to match? Or do they declare a doubles pairing at the start of the tournament and stick with it?
Because if you are allowed to change it around, the Japanese team would not have this problem.
Needing 2 wins from Harimoto is really only a thing they need against the CNT, Mizutani and Niwa are capable of being reasonably expected to take a match between them in singles against any other team, though obviously there are plenty of teams for which that is not a given.
Against other teams, they are definitely capable of taking 3 wins, then it's about favourable matchups and getting 3 before the opposing team gets 3. Against the CNT it's a completely diffrent problem, there are effectively no combination of matchups where the CNT is not a favourite in every matchup, at that stage the JNT are just looking to create variance.