Here's an update: a higher quality video of the full match between Ma Lin (Yekaterinburg) and Vyacheslav Burov (Moscow) from a fantastic
Alex Lomaev's YouTube channel.
Ma Lin was sensationally defeated (2:3) by V. Burov, a recently crowned Russian Premier League Champion in men's singles.
Here are the post-match words of the UMMC's head coach,
Tatyana Kutergina and the
link to the full article: (the article is in Russian, sorry)
- Honestly speaking, I haven't been expecting any grand achievements from Ma Lin. That he was not prepared appropriately to a serious encounter was seen during the first practice already. He hadn't been playing for a long time and suffered from a knee injury. He fought well today but obviously it was very hard for him to act so that sometimes he even didn't catch up with the pace of his opponents' play. All in all, I am only satisfied with the performance of our double {Ma Lin and Tan Ruiwu} for which I am confident now. It turns out that again we lose the matches we are confident in. There now, no game in which we started poorly was eventually won but the other way around - any number.
Ma Lin's comment of the matches:
- You've got a very strong championship. It's evident that the professionals of high level compete in it. As for my level of play, I'm not happy with it. I am affected by the lack of training. I hope that when I play for UMMC in the Championship play-off at the end of May I'll be able to make our supporter's day with more confident play. Many thanks to the fans for their support: the match lasted almost 5 hours and the table tennis fans supported the players throughout the match.