U23 EC: Czechs started the tournament with a loss against Great Britain
Czech players started U23 European Champions on Tuesday afternoon. They faced Great Britain.
Czechs don’t have fond memories of Brits as they already soured their hopes in the previous championship. And they came with a team full of players playing in USA. And one of them was pitcher Zac Sohosky. He caused a lot of troubles to Czech batters, as he didn’t allow any runs in five innings.
National team started Ondřej Vank, who had issue with an injury for the past couple of days. That could be a reason for his performance, as Tempo pitcher walked three batters in the first inning. Lukáš Pacal thus came in to close the inning instead. Třebíč pitcher then continued in the second inning, but Brits scored three runs against him in the third inning and Matyáš Trčka came in.
Brits increased their lead and were 5-0 ahead. They then changed their pitcher in the sixth inning and Russell Derbyshire came in. The change went well with Czech batters, who decreased the deficit with three runs. However, the bottom half of the inning didn’t go their way, and thanks to Liam Houghton’s homerun UK increased their lead to 8-3.
Czechs had one inning to do something about the result. However, they were unable to score any runs against British reliever and the same as in 2011 they took the loss. Czech need to beat Netherlands and Austria in the remaining games of the group stage, or miss out on semifinals again.
