Monday, Aug 19, 2002
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Volleyball
By M.C. Raman
On Sunday at the Kotla Vijaya Baskar Reddy indoor stadium here, Thailand outplayed a hapless Kazakhstan 25-17, 25-19, 25-21 in 57 minutes in the fifth Sivanthi Gold Cup international volleyball tournament and the media wanted to know the impression of the Thai coach about his team's performance. The post-match press briefing on the court itself turned out to be a miserable one for the media and the Kazakh coach went one step ahead saying `no English.', when the mediamen wanted to know from him the reasons for the team's poor show. It could be for two reasons. Either the team must have been underprepared or the failure of air cooler at the stadium might have affected the players, who come from a cold place. Even the Indian teams, which clashed first, found the stadium temperature not conducive enough to play their real game. They were sweating and the Mikasa ball was slipping often. That did not take way Thailand's brilliant performance. With the team lacking in height, it looked like a `Goliaths v David' battle before the match and the Thais did a neat job in cutting the rivals to size. Thailand's game spun around Sriphum Supachai, one of the two senior players who played in the last Asian championships. He was everywhere — attacking brilliantly, jump serving strongly and lifting the team's game with his steady display. The other National senior player, Jarhenrut Yutthapol played second fiddle and the junior stars like Wanchai, Songserm and Shurachai were pretty fast and sharp in attack. Thailand's game resembles more of Japanese style and the quick finish, short ball attack and quick counter-attack helped it to unsettle the rival. The Kazakhs were slow and the Thai coach said the rival block was too slow for his team. That was the team's undoing. The Thai attackers went on a rampage and Supachai was unstoppable. Kazakhstan mostly played a high ball game, and with their height, the spikers should have hammered their rivals. But Ignor, Denis, Alexei and Nicholai tended to be erratic. Denis was pretty bad. The Thai players blocked their shots and the Kazakhs trailed in the first two sets badly — 11-15 and 11-15. Normally teams like Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan tend to be slow starters and when their game picks up, they can shut out any side. But Kazakhstan did not recover and in the third set the Thailand coach fielded bench players when the team was leading by five points. Still the former Soviet State fell flat to lose badly.
India Seniors thwart Juniors' challenge
The opening match between India Seniors and Juniors generated more heat before the match. The Seniors got the better of the Juniors at 25-16, 25-19, 27-25 in 59 minutes. One was keen to know how strong the Juniors' block would be against Tom Joseph, Joby Joseph and Amir Singh. But the Juniors' defence did not come up to expectations. Before the match, the Seniors' coach Shyamsundar Rao told his players to concentrate more on block during pactice and that helped the team in the evening. It was a tremendous challenge for the Juniors' main spiker Sivabalan and Natarajan to get past the towering block of Rajesh and Subba Rao. Sivabalan did make some impact with his thunderous shots. But when the Juniors defence failed, they began to feel the pressure and the Seniors offence became strong. Tom Joseph was hitting hard and so did Joby Joseph, even from the backcourt. Though Amir played a low key role, the Seniors combined smoothly. It was shaky only in the third set, in which it surrendered lead four times to Juniors, who were on a set point at 25-24, but lost the set and match. In fact, the Juniors' setter Kasi began to use the second tempo attack very late in the match. When he brought blocker Kishore into offence the team started well with an early lead. Left-arm spiker Mukesh Kumar also began to spike well. That rattled the rival to some extent. "Mukesh was extremely successful in China. I should have played him the first six. But putting him with Sivabalan would have weakened our defence. It was a miscalculation. Our first pass was also bad and they were forced to play high ball. That was bad against such a strong blocking team,'' said the India Juniors coach M.H. Kumara. Even the jump serve of the juniors was not smooth and they gave away some points because of poor service. Vikram, Rahul and later Pradeep were there for the net defence, but they tended to be off the mark most of the time. The main setter Kasi did not go for more combination attacks and the Seniors did not have to stretch themselves for the victory. ``Considering the injury level of our team, I am satisfied with the performance of the team,'' said Indian Seniors coach Shyamsundar. He also praised libero Arun Jakmola's consistenly good performance.
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