AREQUIPA, Peru – Cuba beat Australia 4-3 this Saturday at the Tianmu Baseball Stadium in Taipei and achieved its first victory in the III Premier 12 baseball tournament, attended by the best-ranked countries in the world.
As reported the state agency Prensa Latina, after being defeated by the Dominican Republic and South Korea, the Cubans had 11 hits to defeat their rivals and keep alive their hopes of reaching the super round, where the medals will be distributed.
The Australians took starter Darío Sarduy off the mound in the same first inning after scoring a couple of runs with four singles, but the Antilleans scored a goal a few minutes later against starter Tim Atherton after hitting three hits, one of them an RBI by Yoelquis Guibert.
In the second act, before a delivery from reliever Blake Townsed, Yadir Drake, who had already hit an undisputed hit in the opening inning, the ball disappeared over the mats with two teammates on base, to give an advantage to his troops who He defended for the rest of the match.
Opening the fifth, Robbie Glendinning narrowed the score against the winner Andy Vargas, who produced another good rescue of three and two-thirds innings with five strikeouts to reach 10 and tie with the tournament leaders.
It was all that the defeated team could do, dominated for two innings by Frank Abel Álvarez, by his substitute Leodan Reyes who got five outs and by the leader in saves in the Pacific League in Japanese baseball, Raidel Martinezwho retired the last three batters, two of them by strikeout.
For this day, the duel is scheduled between the current champions of Japan and the hosts of Chinese Taipei, both undefeated in two outings, and the Dominican Republic-South Korea, teams that have one win and two defeats like the Cubans and Australians.
The next Cuba match will be against the samurai of the Land of the Rising Sun, scheduled for Sunday at 6:00 p.m. local time (5:00 a.m. in Cuba).
The day before, Venezuela (4-1) and the United States (3-2) obtained the two tickets that were distributed in key A to access the final round, to be played in Japan from the 20th to the 24th of this month.
