CHENNAI, Dec 6: The higher seeded teams made largely short work of their lower-ranked opponents in the first round of leagues matches of the 21st World Men’s Team Championship here on Thursday.

However, the highlight of the day’s play was Spaniard second seed Alejandro Garbi Caro scoring a deserving win over Hong Kong’s second seed Wong Wai Hang 11-10 (6-4), 11-8, 7-11, 11-10 (2-0) in 47 minutes in Group B.

As it was, the result was not important as Hong Kong were already 2-0 up in the best-of-three league opener.

World number one Amr Shabana of Egypt dropped a game as he was stretched by Olli Tuominen of Finland in the first two games.

Though the Finn was no match to Shabana in technical aspects of the game, the Egyptian was able to win these games only on extra points.

Shabana led both games (3-1 and 7-2 respectively) but was guilty of relaxing to allow Tuominen back into the equation before winning out.

The Egyptian then dropped the third game 5-11 before coming through in the fourth to help his team to a 3-0 whitewash of the plucky Finns.

Though few matches went to the wire in the best-of-five ties, the match between Dick Lau of Hong Kong and Spaniard David Vidal Villamide was the longest encounter of the first day.

Lau got the better of Villamide in 80 minutes, while Tom Hoevenaars of the Netherlands was businesslike in his 12-minute 3-0 demolition of debutant Hsuen-Chin Huang of Chinese Taipei.—AFP