Indian Volleyball

[Kumar]

India was in a very tough group with both Iran and Poland making the semifinals where they will face each other.

[jayakris]

India finished 10th after a loss to Czech Republic, 21-25, 16-25, 25-22, 16-25... Iran finished with a bronze...

[srini]

Just reminding everyone, our under19 boys made everyone take notice in 2003 with a silver medal and in the process also defying Iran in the semifinal. As you all know we are used to mentioning loss to Iran in the same breath as death, taxes. As a matter of fact this thread for Indian volleyball was started after the boys made us take notice!

[jaydeep]

Good performance by our u19 team to finish on the 10t.h position ... Poland boys won a Gold

[jayakris]

Next action in Men's volleyball is the AFC championships at Chiba and Funabashi, Japan, September 12-19

India made it as automatic qualifiers in the field of 16, as we had finished 8th in the previous edition in 2019 in Iran (where we lost in a 5-setter to Pakistan in the final match to place 8th - but that was a better finish than I expected as we were not playing for 2-3 years anywhere due to our volleyball federation's being not recognized, because of that long political fight). I thought we might not even make the QF in 2019.

India is in pool A with Japan, Qatar and Bahrain. Not an easy pool, but not the toughest either. Will need to beat QAT and BAH.

India had a poor start today, as we lost to Bahrain 25-27, 21-25, 21-25... Japan beat Qatar in three sets too, and we play QAT next. Need to win that and hope for some sort of three-way tie at the second spot or something, because I don't think we can beat Japan. But they are not Iran, so who knows!

[jayakris]

Horrible so far in Japan.... India lost the second match to Qatar, 22–25, 14–25, 20–25

With the pool top seed Japan up next, we are done, and will be fighting for the lower 8 group among the 16. Japan is 2-0 so far and the winner of the Qatar-Baharain match (both 1-1 with losses against Japan and wins against India) will be the second placer to advance from our pool.

Basically no improvement from the senior team's results since the last go around where they surprised us 2 years ago, after a long break of many years from international volleyball altogether. But I think this is a young team (as I don't even recognize many of the guys, and the names I knew from the earlier senior group are all probably retired or whatnot)... Is it time to inject some of the younger fellows from the world top-15 junior team to the senior team (or maybe some are already in there)?

[prasen9]

Do we have a coach who knows what to do? I think maybe that is our bigger problem. Lack of direction. Sridharan was perhaps a great player by Indian standards. Did he play internationally? How good was he? He did take the junior team to a medal at the Asian youth but I do not know if he is good.

[jayakris]

Sridharan is pretty good and has international experience etc, but from a while ago. He had done well with our teams in the past internationally (like our best finish in recent memory - the asian gold by the juniors, some 20 years ago?). My sense is that this is a young team and they picked (probably) a respected figure to just get them going. Not sure.

[jayakris]

Update on the AVC men's championships.

India finished last in our initial pool A, after a loss to Japan, 25–15, 25–15, 25–18... The loss to Bahrain really hurt us. They lost to Qatar and finished third in our pool behind undefeated Japan and one-loss Qatar (who both advanced to the top-8 level pools, pool E and pool F). India and Bahrain were in one of the two bottom 8 pools, fighting for placement in the bottom 8... But with the crazy format, both are in the same pool and the other two are from Pool B... Total bullshit. So the loss carries over (and this is a format that FIVB and AVC need to drop). Anyway, BAH, IND, KUW and UZB are in pool G.

India beat Kuwait (3rd place in pool B behind AUS and CHN), 25–20, 25–20, 25–20 yesterday and India just beat Uzbekistan (4th in Pool B) 25–19, 25–13, 25–22... So, after dropping 9 sets in a row in our first 3 matches, we have won 6 sets in a row. The straight set win win over Kuwait was very good!

As we don't play Bahrain again, we finished the pool G at 2-1 with a 6-3 set score... Bahrain beat Kuwait 3-0 too, so if they beat Uzbekistan this evening (they should), they will finish 3-0 in the pool and we advance with them to the knockout rounds for the 9-12 spots. Pretty clear that Pool A was the toughest pool, which was unfortunate for us. If they had mixed the teams in building second round pools, they cannot reduce the number of matches with the carried-over wins/losses, but it would be fair for everybody. But then it may be fortunate for us that pool B had two easier teams, and so we could beat both of them and are in place to advance even despite the carried-over loss to Bahrain, barring a straight-game win by KUW over Bahrain, which I don't think will happen. (Wait: Maybe we HAVE advanced as the second placer of pool G. The best KUW can do is 6-4 in sets, as they are 2-4 so far. Not sure)

Anyway, I will update later today on our pool finish and whom we play next in the knockout rounds (hopefully for the 9th-12 spots as a top-2 finisher of pool G and not for 13-16 spots)

[jayakris]

Okay, so India has advanced out of pool G by finishing second, to play knockouts for the 9th through 12th spots, regardless of the outcome of the BAH-KUW match. We will play the top finisher of pool H. [Update: It will be India vs Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain vs Kaakhstan for the 9th-thru-12th spots knockout]

[prasen9]

I think trying to get a "tournament" for the lower half teams is a good thing and in order to accommodate the matches, using a score between teams to reduce the number of matches is a good thing.

[jayakris]

Okay, so by finishing second in pool E behind Bahrain, we were in the 10th-thru-12th spot knockout round. We got the top team from pool F, Saudi Arabia... No problems! India d. Saudi Arabia, 25–22, 25–22, 25–23 today. So, after dropping the first three matches without taking a set, we have taken three matches without dropping a set!

Bahrain beat the second team from pool H, Kazakhstan in 4 sets. So now we are at the 9th-10th spots, and we face Bahrain... Let us beat these busters and finish #9. Here are the final matches.

Japan vs Iran for Gold
China vs Taiwan for Bronze
Australia vs Qatar for 5th
Korea vs Pakistan for 7th
India vs Bahrain for 9th
Saudi vs Kazakhstan for 11th
Uzbek vs Hong Kong for 13th
Thailand vs Kuwait for 15th

Definitely the JPN/QAT/BAH/IND initial pool A (with all 4 teams finishing in the top-10) was the toughest and the IRI/PAK/HKG/THA group was the easiest, so Pakistan managed to finish in the top-8 purely because of the bad format and uneven seeding/grouping. And then Korea seems to have sent a very poor team this time too. Thailand and Uzbekistan who used to be in the top-7 in Asia have fallen harder than us. Indonesia has disappeared altogether. The middle east teams have all become better over the recent years, especially Qatar and Bahrain.... And to our horrible luck, we got those two and the home team in the initial pool. How crazy!

[prasen9]

Where did Qatar and Bahrain import their players from?

[indiansportsfan]

Even with a better draw, I don't think they would have finished better than 8th, because they are clearly inferior to Iran, Japan, China, Chinese Taipei, Australia, Qatar and South Korea. Now they have a chance to finish 9th by reversing the preliminary pool result. But if they lose this game, they clearly deserve the 10th spot. (I would rate Pakistan matchup as 50-50)

[SaniaFan]

I think Pakistan would beat south Korea and will finish 7th. India would also have beaten Korea. So they are probably 1 place lower.