Pak volleyball team set to leave for Doha today

KARACHI: Pakistan volleyball team is set to leave for Doha on Sunday (today) to play a few practice matches before proceeding to Indonesia from there on July 20 to take part in the Asian Championship slated to be held at Surabaya from July 24 to August 1.

In Qatar’s capital, Pakistan would play three matches against the hosts’ national team and Iraq which also is due to visit there.

“Qatar Volleyball Federation is hosting these matches and has in fact converted it into a three-nation tournament. This tournament will provide good opportunity for all three teams to test their combination before the continental event,” a Pakistan Volleyball Federation (PVF) spokesman said on Saturday.

In the continental event, as many as 16 outfits will be vying for the top honours. These outfits have been placed in four groups of four teams each.

Indonesia, Qatar, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia have been bracketed in Group A, while last edition’s runners-up Iran, Chinese Taipei, Pakistan and Iraq have been put in Group B. Defending champions Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Sri Lanka form Group C while Group D carries Australia, China, Thailand and Hong Kong.

In the preliminaries, Pakistan will begin their journey with a game against Chinese Taipei on July 24, followed by their outing against Iran on July 25 and Iraq on July 26. The PVF is optimistic that the team would put up its best.

“We have good talent and the boys have been trained reasonably well under foreign coach Hamid Movahedi. The team is young with some tall and fit players who have the potential to perform exceedingly well in future with more experience,” the PVF said.

“These boys performed well in recently held Islamic Solidarity Games at Baku, Azerbaijan, where besides winning from Turkmenistan and Palestine, Pakistan played a five-set match against strong Turkey,” the PVF added. “Turkey plays in European league and is highly rated in the world,” the federation said.

Meanwhile, PVF chairman Chaudhary Mohammad Yaqoob told this correspondent that after going to Indonesia effort would be made to arrange a warm-up match either against Korea or Japan. As per new international rules, a team has now 14 players instead of 12 like in the past. In the last continental event Pakistan had finished tenth.

Pakistan have been preparing at the Pakistan Sports Complex in Islamabad for the last few months.

Squad: Muneer Khan, Mubashir Reza, Asif Nadeem, Sheraz, Aimal Khan, Naseer Ahmed (captain), Imran Sultan, Mohammad Kashif Naved, Murad Jehan, Mohammad Idrees, Mohammad Adeel, Nasir Ali, Fahad Reza, Fakhruddin; Officials: Mohammad Farooq (manager), Hamid Movahedi (coach), Mazhar Hussain, Mohammad Jameel, Ubaidullah Shah (assistant coaches), Farokhi Fard (analyst, Iran).