Cambodia beat Saudi, finish on top

Manama : Cambodia ranked 101 in the world defeated Saudi Arabia (111) 2-1 to finish with four wins from four and top Pool A as the round-robin matches concluded on the fifth day of action in the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Davis Cup matches in Pool A of the Asia/Oceania Group IV on the hard courts of the Bahrain Tennis Federation Courts at the Bahrain Polytechnic in Isa Town.

Both sides had qualified for today’s promotion matches with Cambodia comprising Kenny Bun, Samneang Long, Saith Our and Phalkun Mam, while the Saudis clinched the runner-up spot despite its loss and comprise Saud and Ammar Al Haqbani, along with Fahad Al Saad and Faisal Al Rebdi.

In the other pool match, Myanmar (120) edged out Kyrgyzstan (124) 2-1. Bahrain (107) had a bye yesterday after the completion of its matches and the squad of Hassan Abdulnabi, Abdulkarim Abdulnabi, Elyas Abdulnabi, Yousif Qaed under 64-match veteran non-playing captain and coach Essam Abdul A’al are set to play Tajikistan in the seventh and eighth match play-off against Tajikistan today at 11am.

Bahrain first entered the Davis Cup in 1989 and have four times been in Group II of the regional zones. Meanwhile, Singapore (107) and Oman (122) finished top of Pool B respectively following Singapore’s 2-1 win over Iraq (106) and Oman’s (122) 1-2 loss to Mongolia (126), while Tajikistan was a 2-1 winner over Bangladesh.

Three sides finished on a four win one loss record - with Mongolia losing out due to its percentage of sets won head to head record and the other three teams had a one win and four loss record which also determined the final placings.

Singapore’s squad comprised Shaheed Alam, Roy Hobbs, Hao Yuan Ng and Joshua Liu and for Oman, Younis Al Rawahi, Abdulla Al Barwani, Mohammed Al Nabhani and Zakariya Alsuleimani. 11 teams have been playing round-robin which concluded yesterday with the promotion places decided by the winners of a play-off match between the Pool A winners and Pool B runners-up and the Pool B winners against Pool A runners-up to Group III for the 2018 edition of the Davis Cup today, along with three classification matches.