The Hindu : North Korea puts paid to South's hopes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 11, 2003

Sport

Sport - Volleyball

North Korea puts paid to South's hopes

By M.C. Raman

Visakhapatnam April 10. It was a day of hectic tussles for better positions in groups. India raced to its third straight victory, beating Qatar at 25-22, 25-16,25-22, to capture the top spot in Group A in the fourth Asian Youth (boys) volleyball championship at the Rajiv Gandhi Port indoor stadium here on Thursday.

However, for Iran it was not that easy as China got off to a great start. But the defending champion changed tactics to record its fourth straight victory at 21-25, 25-15, 25-23, 25-23 in 85 minutes for the No. 1 spot in the five-team Group B with four wins.

The real battle was fought by DPR Korea against South Korea for No. 2 spot in Group B.

It was a five-setter over extra points and North Korea finally managed to win at 25-27, 26-24, 25-16, 20-25, 19-17 in 98 minutes. With this third win North Korea finished second behind Iran.

This was how the teams finished in their groups: India (A1), Thailand (A2), Qatar (A3), Chinese-Taipei (A4) and Iran (B1), DPR Korea (B2), China (B3), Australia (B4). South Korea, which lost all its four matches, went out of the competition.

Of the three encounters on Thursday, two were quite interesting. The real interest was in the Iran-China match as the spectators waited eagerly for this prestigious tie after the exciting North and South Korea match.

When China made a rousing start, the crowd cheered the team as it looked the defending champion would be on the mat. The vibrant Chinese side did well both in attack and defence. Both the Wangs — Lei and Zhang — propped up the attack serving and attacking strongly. Even in block China did a neat job and Iran's main spiker Mohammed Soleymani was blunted effectively.

Iran changed its tactics in the second set, using its centre blocker Ranjbar for spiking. With a low and strong jump serve, Iran changed the complexion of the match. Soleymani, Sadeghi and Sadeghiyani kept up the pressure with their strong and dipping jump serve and that disturbed China's first pass and the team's attack became erratic.

In the second, third and fourth sets, Iran quickly took a two-point lead and then stretched them to seven points with relentless attack and serve. The Iranian coach rested Salehi and brought in Kazai and that worked to some extent.

After Iran had stablised its game, Soleymani began to attack again and continued to unleash his deceptive shots, some of which really troubled the Chinese back court players, who could not retrieve them as the ball dipped.

Soleymani seems to have plenty of tricks up his sleeves to get away from tight situations and is undoubtedly the best spiker here. Setter Behza was also pretty sharp in giving arc passes. He put Iraq back into its groove and the machine moved on.

In the match-up between the Koreas, North maintained a better spiking rate to get the better of South.

The South Korean game fluctuated with left-arm spiker Chul-Woo Park's attack and whenever he was steady and sharp the team bounced back. The North Koreans did a clever job by blocking out his down the line smashes and forcing him to play his cross-court shots. That was how the team won two sets after losing the first set.

Sung Min Moon and Yung Suk Shin also joined the offence and South Korea kept coming back. Chul-Woo attempted 49 shots in the match but succeeded only in 19. But North Korea's Ju Ryong attempted 50 and got 24 points. Even Pak Yong let go 29 shots and got 19 points. Ho Kwang had 50 per cent striking rate. Where North Korea had problem was in dig in which South Korea did well.

Though North Korea was on match point at 15-14 in the decider, South would not relent. The tie headed for a thrilling finish as South Korea desperately wanted to win at least one match. But Ju Ryong spiked superbly to give North Korea its third win.

India's attack helped it to overcome its other defects to down Qatar, which tended to be erratic and poor in back court defence. Today Ali spiked well and India's block was a bit weak.

But India's Sanjay Kumar, Vikas Tomar, Dinesh and Srikant gave India an edge in attack and their finish was also good in the final stages. That mattered most against Qatar, which was fumbling in defence.

It was Qatar's poor rebound retrieving that was its undoing as it once was 22-22 in the first set and again 20-20 in the third set. But it squandered its chances because of poor finish.

"I was not satisfied with the block today. Sanjay should have put in more effort in block. Even service reception was not good. But we have to make up,'' said the Indian coach, G.E. Sridharan.

Friday's matches (quarterfinal elimination matches): Thailand v China (10 a.m), Qatar v DPR Korea (12 p.m.), Iran v Chinese-Taipei (3 p.m.) and India v Australia (5 p.m.)

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