by Simon Daish
Nadezhda Bogdanova got the ball rolling for Belarus with a three games to one victory over Valeria Shcherbatykh (10-12, 11-7, 11-7, 12-10) with Viktoria Pavlovich contributing a second success for the hosts against Anastasia Kolish (8-11, 11-6, 11-2, 11-7).
Russia’s Yana Noskova hit back with two wins to force a deciding fixture which saw Marharyta Baltushite recover from two games down to beat Valeria Shcherbatykh in a five game thriller (6-11, 3-11, 11-8, 11-6, 11-9).
Victorious in Budapest in the opening round of qualification but Spain failed to complete the double over Hungary in the return fixture in early October. Dora Madarasz put the visitors ahead in Zamora thanks to a five games win over Maria Xiao (11-7, 7-11, 11-4, 14-16, 11-7) before Georgina Pota and Szandra Pergel overcame challenges from Galia Dvorak (11-3, 9-11, 13-11, 11-4) and Alba Fernandez (11-3, 11-3, 11-4) to seal Hungary’s second win of the campaign.
The young German line-up of Chantal Mantz, Nina Mittelham and Wan Yuan secured an impressive 3-0 win on their travels to Azerbaijan, claiming their sixth group point in the process while the Netherlands prevailed away to Italy. Austria and Poland also came away with 3-0 victories in their respective encounters with Switzerland and Slovenia.
England continues to fly high in Group B with a brace from Tin-Tin Ho inspiring the team to a 3-1 success away to Norway. However, the news was not so pleasant for the other British side in action as Scotland suffered a 0-3 defeat at the hands of Serbia. Further away victories came courtesy of Belgium, Turkey and Lithuania with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia and Finland ending up on the wrong side of 0-3 results.