Volleyball Update: Asian Men's Cup Championship kicks off in Iran
The game of volleyball is always in a swing, the activity goes on and on throughout the year. Beach Volleyball is more popular in the European and American countries, as they are blessed with beautiful beaches and good weather. On the contrary, most of the Asian countries play volleyball on hard-courts. Volleyball is considered a fun activity coupled with lot skill and energy.
The second Asian Men’s Cup Volleyball in the city of Urmia, Iran, is part of the campaign which promotes volleyball in Asia. The championship started on Monday, 2nd August, 2010. The top-eight finishers from last year’s Asia Championship in Manila, Philippines are participating in the tournament. However, Indonesia was withdrawn from the event at the last moment and India replaced them.
Teams are divided into two pools; Pool A comprises of defending champion Iran along with India, China, and Taiwan while four teams in Pool B are: South Korea, Kazakhstan, Australia, and Japan.
Iran is defending the title and currently the team hold a very strong spot. With their excellent players’ line-up, they aim to re-capture the gold medal in Asian Men’s Championship. The head coach of Iran’s volleyball team Hossein Madani discussed the prospects of his team in the tournament. He said, “Our third game, which is against China, is our most important match. Iran is going to reach the final”.
The Iranian team stands with good records in the past; they defeated South Korea in the first edition of the competitions in Thailand in 2008.
On the first day of tournament, World number 10, China defeated Chinese Taipei in Pool A. Besides China, the other teams such as Australia, Iran, and South Korea dominated their respective rivals in the game.
In Pool A, China started off with great pace and influenced the Chinese Taipei in every way. The Chinese exhibited a great performance and posted 25-19, 25-16, and 25-14 victory over the opponents. Chinese Guo Peng was given the star player of the match, as an acknowledgment of his brilliant play.
Likewise, the defending champion Iran took on India and defeated the Indian side with 3-2 (25-15, 25-17, and 23-25, 23-25, 15-10). It was a tight match, though. The Indian team took full advantage of tall-statured defensive players and Gurinder Singh led the team with a great temper. Iran had a tough time to block the court-pounding spikes of Indian players. Somehow, Iranian team benefited from the support of their home-ground and encouragement of local fans, which finally turned the game in their favour. There were about 6,000 people who watched the game.
In Pool B games, Australian team battled with Kazakhstan and polled a 3-0 (25-15, 25-23, 25-21) victory in three straight sets, while Korea whiplashed Japan by achieving a competitive edge of 3-2 (25-18, 23-25, 25-17, 21-25, 17-15).
In fact, Australia easily managed to dismiss the world number 25 Kazakhstan. Australian players were able to break the defence-line of Kazakhstan’s team and heavily influenced them with delivery of powerful shots. Kazakhstan tried to fight back and bring stability in the game but they failed to restore their confidence against the strong Aussie side.
Kazakhstan’s Coach regretted about the losing the game but he expressed optimism for the future games. He said that, they tried most of the young players in the team, it was a kind of experiment and the players will surely bring good results in future.
On the other hand, the Australian coach, Russel Borgeaud, passed very good remarks about the team build-up. He said, the whole team is good and every player is ready take a challenge.
South-Korea dominated Japan after a heated competition. The game was full of good blocks, sharp spikes, and excellent serves.
The fury of volleyball is on for few more days and more exciting games are yet to come.
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