Sports desk: Bangladesh erupted in wild celebration when the match referee declared Bangladesh winners of the Bangabandhu Asian Men’s Senior Central Zone Volleyball Championship in the capital yesterday.
By winning the five-nation tournament, Bangladesh tasted their first trophy victory in an international tournament in their 45-year volleyball history.
Bangladesh earlier faced-off the high-ranked Kyrgyzstan twice-one in World Cup qualifier and other in this tournament but they could win either of the matches.
But yesterday at the crowd-pact Shaheed Suhrawardy Indoor Stadium, Bangladesh made a stunning campaign when they earned the first point of the opening set. Although there were twists in 30-minute-long first set, Bangladesh finally won the set by 25-22 points.
In the 32-minute-long second set, Bangladesh also got the first point of the set and progressed to the ending of the set by 25-23 points. At one stage of this set (3-1), the match was halted for around 20 minutes due to the disruption of the electricity.
Kyrgyzstan, who acquired the first point of the third set, desperately sought to come back in the competition but when the point equation was 6-7, Kyrgyzstan’s Toktoev Nurmukhammed sustained injury while he along with other players while trying to stop a smash of Bangladeshi spiker.
He could not come back in the ground after being taken care by physicians. Later the match referee declared the match ‘by default’. As a result, Bangladesh emerged champions by three sets of 25-22, 25-23, 7-6 (25-6).
Kyrgyzstan appeared here in Bangladesh with 12 players of whom two of them earlier were wounded. As a result, they came here to play the final with 10 players. But unfortunately when Toktoev fallen injury they have left no sufficient players to continue the game.
Before the onset of the final, Salman F Rahman, private sector development affairs adviser to Awami League President Sheikh Hasina, introduced with the both teams’ players. Chief guest Commerce minister and tournament’s organizing committee chairman Tofail Ahmed and state minister for sports Biren Shikdar distributed prizes amongst the winners.
Bangladesh captain Sayed Al Zabir was named the player of the match in final, while Horosit Biswas was adjudged the player of the tournament.
Champions were awarded with US$ 1,5000, whereas runner-up received US$ 1,000.
After the final match, Bangladesh captain said that they set their target to be champions in the tournament.
“We played against Kyrgyzstan twice earlier but we could not win any match against them. After losing the last by 3-2 sets, we analysis them and sort out their strength and weakness. As per the game plan, we started playing against them and became victorious,” said Zabir.
In the third deciding match, Maldives defeated Nepal by 3-1 sets at the same ground earlier of the final.
