U20 Volleyball Championship daily report

Manama, July 24 (BNA): Heavyweights Iran enjoyed a comfortable three-set victory over Korea last night to secure the number one ranking heading into the knockout stages of the 19th Asian Men’s U20 Volleyball Championship, being held in Isa Sports City in Riffa. This year’s Asian U20 Championship is following a new, complicated competition format for the first time. The tournament has been organised by the Asian Volleyball Confederation in cooperation with the Bahrain Volleyball Association. It is being held under the patronage of His Majesty the King’s Charity Works and Youth Affairs Representative, Supreme Council for Youth and Sports Chairman and Bahrain Olympic Committee President Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa. The Iranians outclassed their Korean rivals 3-0 (25-22, 25-21, 25-19) to sweep Pool A and secure first place overall at the end of the Preliminary Round. Japan followed suit in Pool B as they outclassed Turkmenistan 3-0 (25-12, 25-12, 25-11) to secure the fourth ranking. Others to join Iran and Japan yesterday to finish their respective Preliminary Round campaigns as undefeated teams were Hong Kong and Macau. Hong Kong beat the UAE while Macau needed five sets to take down Malaysia. In other matches, Iraq notched their first victory after beating Qatar, Saudi Arabia did the same against Pakistan, New Zealand got a freebie with a default win against withdrawn side Uzbekistan, and Australia got on the wins column after beating Kazakhstan. Following the preliminaries, the top-eight ranked teams, in order, were Iran, Korea, China, Japan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Sri Lanka and Australia. None of these teams will be suiting up today as the knockouts get underway; they will be back in action on Wednesday. Bahrain had a rest day today but had already secured the number 10 ranking on Sunday night. They are next scheduled to face Malaysia in their first knockout game today. The rankings at the end of the preliminaries determine the match-ups for the knockouts. In Pool A, Iran turned what was supposed to be a tightly contested affair into a walk in the park. They dominated their Korean counterparts and gave them no chance of getting into the game. "Korea is a very good team, and one of the highest quality teams in Asia; but today, we just tried our best to put the pressure on their service line, and if they won’t play very fast then the quality of the match would be reduced," said Iran head coach Behrouz Ataei. "This is something we saw today." Of their upcoming matches in the knockouts, Ataei commented: "We do not want to predict anything. Each day, we are only thinking about each match and all our provisions for this match only. Today, we were just thinking of Korea. I think we did really well on that. "Overall, each match we are just getting step by step stronger and moving forward towards our goals. Every team here has their own goals, we have ours, and hopefully we get there." Morteza Sharifi was the overall top scorer for the Iranians, finishing with 13 points, including 12 on attack. Porya Yali added 12 points and Captain Amirhossein Esfandiar had seven, both on attack. Im Donghyeok paced Korea with 10 points overall in the loss. In Japan’s match, they managed to claim their second win in as many tries, while also handing Turkmenistan their second successive defeat. "No match is easy for us," Japan head coach Kazushi Masunari said. "I think we were just tired today because we played Thailand in a close five sets on Sunday." Ryuki Ban led the Japanese with 10 points overall, seven of which were on attack. Skipper Kento Miyaura and Itaru Tashiro each finished with six spikes. Macau and Malaysia were engaged in a tight battle this evening, with Macau managing to narrowly take the victory in five sets (30-28, 20-25, 25-23, 23-25, 15-13). There was little to separate the two sides in their match, which lasted close to two-and-a-half hours. Leong Ka Him spearheaded the victors with 29 points overall, 25 of which was in attack. Lester Siah was the best scorer for Malaysia with 33 markers overall. The first pair of knockout games begin Tuesday morning at 11.30am and continue until late at night.