Baseball
Matanzas knocked 11x1 to Los Piratas from Isla de la Juventud and won 1st bilateral cap of the playoffs semifinals of LIV Cuban Baseball Championship.

Matanzas' Los Cocodrilos, leaders of the regular season, unleashed a ferocious offensive and did not stop until knocking down in 7 innings to Los Piratas of the island, last qualified for the post season.

The 4th batter Yadiel Hernandez hit 4-4, including home run and 2 RBIs to lead the attack of the hosts at the Victoria de Girón Stadium.

Yadier Hechavarría took the success in a work of 3 chapters in place of starter Yoanni Yera, surprisingly replaced by manager Victor Mesa, who although not allowed a run in the 1st third, but with 1 out in the 4th endured a double and a single.

Ulfrido García, opener by the Isla de la Juventud, could only stay 1 entry and none of the 4 later pitchers could contain the winning drive.

Both teams will play the 2nd game of the semifinal this Wednesday, for which a left-handed pitchers duel between the host Cionel Pérez and the visitor Darien Núñez is expected.

Diving

The Blues' landfall was silenced…not only in Havana. The deafening chants of Industriales’ fans were drawn.

In Dubai, United Arab Emirates, seat of the second leg of the FINA World Diving Series, another blue phantom took possession of our divers Jose Antonio Guerra and Jenkler Aguirre in the synchronized platform: that of number 5.

The Cubans finished 5th, as they did 1 week ago at Beijing's Ice Cube with 353.58 points; nonetheless, they performed much better now with 407.04.

Guerra and Aguirre were much more synchronized in the 10m platform with a series of 54.60, 50.40, 76.80, 79.68, and 77.52 points; however, their hopes to finish in the top-3 ended after they poorly performed in the 3.6 degree of difficulty and got only 68.04 points of the 90-100 expected.

They saw how the Chinese duet Yue Lin-Aisen Chen outperformed them with a total of 484.23 points while Mexicans German Sanchez and Ivan Garcia also jumped better 426.27.

German Patrick Hausding-Sacha Klein (415.20) and Canadian Phillippe Gagne-Vincent Riendeau (408.63) got the 3rd and 4th places, respectively.

Kazan, Russia, will host the next leg, from April 24-26. This event may serve as special scenario to prepare our divers' strategies for the Pan-American Games in Toronto, Canada (July 10-26).