Paul Drinkhall hailed his best performance to date as the T2APAC league reached the halfway point.

Drinkhall defeated Chinese Taipei’s Chen Chien-An 4-1 (11-7, 11-4, 11-9, 11-5, 2-7) in the 24-minute match, helping his Team Rossi to their biggest win of the series so far – 19-8 against Team Maze.

It followed his victory over world No 6 Jun Mizutani in the first of his three fixtures this month, while he also came close to world No 20 Tomokazu Harimoto in the second fixture.

Drinkhall said:

I’ve been playing well recently but I didn’t feel great going into it, but I got my head down and played tactically quite well and everything came together.

It was an all-round good performance with everything working well together – tactically, mentally, physically. I’ve been working on being more stable and consistent and that showed, and it gave me confidence.

I’ve been speaking to Rossi (team captain Jorg Rosskopf) and I’m trying to learn a lot from him because he was a top player and has been working with Dimitrij Ovtcharov and Timo Boll for quite a few years.

It’s good to be around him and also practising with Dimitrij and the other players. I feel I’m improving all round and that’s why I wanted to be a part of the series.

There are three more rounds of matches over the next three months, with the series Grand Finals to follow in December.