The name of WDC vice champion PanDarea will have to get scratched off the participants list for this year's SMM Grand National DotA Tournament. As sgamer.com reports today, the favoured Chinese team will be unable to travel to Kuala Lumpur this weekend due to passport issues.
In 2011, PanDa have placed four times within the top three of Chinese tournaments, seeing their performances improving since last month, when a second place at the World DotA Championship was achieved. Upon winning the smaller Longcheng and Tiandi Cups quickly afterwards, the team would have attended SMM as the biggest challenger of top favourite DK. Through sgamer, PanDa express their regret about the unfortunate turn of events.
EG's reason for fielding a short-term substitute is found in the visa of Amel “PlaymatE” Barudzija requiring renewal, for which the 23-year-old solo carry had to travel back home. Yinqi “XiaoLuo” Luo who formerly collected competitive experience in Nirvana.cn will take Barudzija's place.
Nirvana.cn meanwhile suffered from similar problems as utility specialist KingJ's passport seemed to have played tricks on him as well. After having won SMM with FTD and EHOME two consecutive times in the years 2009 and 2010, KingJ will now have to watch Shen 'Crystal' Jiaqi following in his footsteps. Also called the 'firefighter', Jiagi recently hit the headlines, after announcing a new start in team World Elite.
Links
dota.sgamer.com - Source
myeg.net - Source
dota.178.com - Source
