China Won Title at the 28th Boys Nankyu World Championship

USA - English

• USA - English

BEIJING, Aug. 9 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- QSL Sports Limited (QSL) is pleased to announce that China has won the title of the 28th Boys Nankyu World Championship held in Tokyo at the end of July, 2010. This is the first time in the past 11 years that China has won an international championship represented by a team from the China Youth Baseball League (CYBL).

QSL has signed a long-term exclusive partnership with Chinese Baseball Association (CBA) in June 2009 to help promote the CYBL with the ultimate goal of raising China's influence in the sport on the international stage. The first CYBL national tournament was held in August 2009, right after the announcement of the partnership. In one year's time, China has successfully won an international baseball title.

The CYBL team representing China in this championship is made up of young students from Da Cheng School in Beijing and players from baseball club "New Star Dragon". The players in this club are mostly orphans or from a disadvantaged background.

Mr. TIAN Yuan, a senior executive of Chinese Baseball Association, said, "QSL promised the target of delivering a baseball world championship to CYBL when negotiating the exclusive 15-year contract with us. But we never expected getting a world championship trophy within the first year of the privatization of CYBL. Mr. Huang, as the founder of QSL, is a man who can keep his promise and always delivered."

Mr Randy LEVIN, President of the New York Yankees and Marc GANIS, owner of Chicago-based Sportscorp Limited also sent their congratulations to QSL for achieving this outstanding result. "Let's get these young players to the Yankee stadium to honor them," Mr Levin said. The baseball team representing China in this championship is the same group of CYBL players who went to the Yankees' world championship trophy tour in Beijing earlier this year.

The tournament, organized by the International Boys Nankyu Baseball Association (IBA) Japan, featured 16 teams from Taiwan, the United States, Australia, China, Peru, South Korea, the Philippines, Paraguay, Singapore, Thailand, Brazil and Japan.

They were divided into four divisions in the preliminary round, with the top two from each division advancing to the knockout round. Last year's championship went to a Japanese team.

During the championship game, China Taipei and China scored nil points after the regulation six innings, but China won the title 6-3 in extra innings, where each team started its half of the inning with the bases loaded.

Nankyu is a Japanese term for rubber baseball, which is usually used by teenage players for safety purposes. It follows the same rules as baseball.

QSL is a private company founded by Mr Kenny HUANG. It serves as an investment platform to capture business opportunities in sports in China. Dr YANG Guang, Executive Vice President of Franklin Templeton Investments, partners with Huang to jointly promote the company's sports-related investment. In addition to the CYBL partnership, QSL also has a 6-year exclusive partnership (with an extension option for another 6 years) with CBA to develop the China Baseball League (CBL), the only official professional baseball league in China.

SOURCE QSL Sports Limited