Lodz, Poland, June 1, 2018 – With a continuously improving performance by Christian Fromm, Germany beat China 3-1 (23-25, 25-18, 25-22, 25-21) in Lodz on Friday to register their first victory in the FIVB Volleyball Nations League.
Fromm delivered as many as 19 points to top the charts for Germany. Simon Hirsch kept him good company on the scoreboard with 13 points, including four stuff blocks, one ace and the successful hit that ended it all in the fourth set.
Two more German players went into the double digits. Marcus Boehme and Tobias Krick finished with 13 and 12 points, respectively.
China’s Chuan Jiang was the best scorer of the match. He added 24 points to his tally, but his efforts alone were not enough for winning more than one set.
With many Polish fans enjoying themselves on the stands at the Atlas Arena, China came from behind to win the first set, but Germany reacted by winning the next three and the match, putting both teams at a 1-3 win-loss record in the bottom half of the current VNL standings.
Hammering the ball at 120 km/h, Jiang got a four-point Chinese run underway in the first set. Libin Liu chipped in with a couple of aces, sandwitching in between another Jiang hit that squeezed the ball between the block and the net, to give China a 12-10 lead and never look back through the end of the set.
But Fromm had just warmed up with a couple of points in this first set and was ready to explode in the next three. He started the second set with a fantastic back row hit to give Germany the early lead and finished the set with a brilliant cross-court spike to level the match.
Hammering one point after another, Fromm really took the leading role on the squad from the third set on. At 9-9 in the fourth, he scored from the serving line to reverse a short-lived Chinese lead, and followed soon after with a 101.7 km/h pipe shot. Moments later, he showed his gentle side, elegantly tipping the ball over the block for the next German break point. China never recovered from this blow, while Germany celebrated victorious.