The home team defended their title at the Hong Kong International Darts Festival Championship on Sunday, coming from behind to stun Malaysia in an epic final. Team Hong Kong three times drew level with their familiar foes before prevailing in the deciding foursome at AsiaWorld-Expo to steal the title from under the Malaysians’ noses. Hong Kong’s key player Hugo Leung Man-lok admitted afterwards that he was left “speechless” by the result. “It was exciting, given that this was the first international tournament in Hong Kong in three years, because of the pandemic,” said Leung, who was also part of the city’s team in 2019. “We won the tournament three years ago, so the target was obvious, and that made me nervous at times.” Despite his nerves, Leung, 23, carried the Hong Kong team. A World Youth Championship quarter-finalist – he this year became the first Asian to get that far – he featured in six of the seven games in the final, as well as five of the six in the 4-2 win over England in the semi-finals. Assessing his performance, he still only awarded himself a modest 75 out of 100. “I’d say I was respectable,” he sad. “I was able to recover despite having some below-par games in the process, and ultimately we won.” The defending champions opened the day with back-to-back wins over Singapore and Thailand in the round-robin stage. Although they slipped to a nail-biting 3-2 defeat against Japan in the final group match, Hong Kong topped the pool and advanced to the semi-finals ahead of Singapore. Having trailed for most of the final, Team Hong Kong then managed to dispatch the Malaysians 4-3. Alongside Leung was James Law Tsz-hei, who captained the winning side three years ago. He credited “team effort” for this latest success. “The team did well, our morale remained high throughout and we never stopped encouraging each other,” he said. “This was the key to victory, because our opponents felt the pressure.” He may not have been the first name on the team sheet this weekend, but the former captain delivered when called upon. Law was the partner to Leung in the doubles match as they gave Hong Kong a lifeline in the must-win sixth game in the final. The 34-year-old also made telling contributions on the way to victory in the semi-final. Another star of the tournament was Sun Wai-ting. On top of winning all three of her games in the final to help win the team title, she amassed three individual titles. “I had never won so many titles in a tournament, but I think I can still improve technically,” said Sun, 28, who pocketed HK$16,000 individual prize money on top of the HK$60,000 team prize.
