The Hindu : Volleyball: Tamil Nadu women clinch gold

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 17, 2002

Sport

Sport - National Games

Volleyball: Tamil Nadu women clinch gold

By M.C. Raman

The Tamil Nadu women's squad which bagged the volleyball crown in the National Games in Hyderabad on Monday. (Right): Andhra Pradesh team, winner of the men's title. — Photos: M. Moorthy

Hyderabad Dec. 16 . The Andhra men's team, the four-in-a-row champion since the modern National Games began in Delhi in 1985, regained the top honours after being out of the medal race in 1999 at Imphal and again in 2001 at Ludhiana, with a 25-13, 25-18, 17-25, 29-27 victory over Punjab in the final of the volleyball tournament at the Kotla Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy indoor stadium here on Monday.

Earlier, Tamil Nadu women defended the title they won in the 2001 Games, beating Andhra at 25-19, 25-23, 25-17. Tamil Nadu stood first in 1987 and 1994 also when Asha Rani and Salomi Ramu played for the State.

As the host teams participated in both the finals the stadium was virtually full well in advance. The fans who expected a double gold, were however disappointed as Tamil Nadu fought bravely both the noisy crowd and Andhra to clinch the coveted medal.

Having been disappointed by the women's squad, the spectators rooted for their men's side, which launched its attack straightaway to take a 2-0 lead. But Punjab rallied strongly. However, the Andhra players regained their touch at the right time to overhaul the five-point deficit in the fourth set to bring down Punjab, the 1999 winner at Imphal.

Andhra's men team would not have been so strong had it not included Subba Rao from Uttaranchal. And this enhanced its spiking and blocking power of the home side considerably. The tallest man among the top eight sides in the country today, Subba Rao tilted the match decisively in Andhra's favour, particularly in the first two sets. Even Dhananjaya Rao was angled his cross court shots well. Sudhakar and Subba Rao put up strong double blocks and that blunted much of Punjab's spiking in which only Jagbir Singh was consistent in the later stages.

In fact, Punjab rallied in the third set mainly because of him and with better net defence the former champion surged ahead with a 6-2 lead. It was a highly spirited game that Punjab played in this set. Pritipal and Roy Joseph combined smoothly in double block. Narinder and Gurvinder lent support in attack. But Jagbir carried the burden of getting points on his shoulder despite bad first pass. Andhra served intelligently to disrupt Punjab's first pass right through the match.

Into the fourth set, Punjab maintained a five-point lead after taking a 4-0 advantage in the beginning itself. At 22-18 Punjab was well to stretch the match to fifth set. Punjab, using its second setter Inderjeet Singh, was rattled by confusion for a while and lost the lead. At 23-23 it was anybody's game and Punjab was at set point four times.

However, Andhra fought magnificently. With Ravikanth Reddy setting well, Dhananjaya Rao unleashed his shots to give Andhra the title.

Tamil Nadu took the men's bronze, beating Kerala 31-33, 33-31, 25-20, 25-21 in 99 minutes.

The reason for Tamil Nadu women's success was steady first pass by libero Devi and Geeta Raju's sharp spiking. Geeta sprained her ankle earlier, but for this match she was fit. That gave the defending champion an edge in attack. Shiji Kurian was brilliant in both block and attack. She spiked short ball neatly. Setter Sunitha was using more arc passes to split the rival defence. She succeeded in that.

Tamil Nadu's strong net defence in the first set unnerved Naghavardhini and Radhika, who could hardly spike. Latha was spiking better, but Srilatha ran into strong rival block. Every Andhra attack was rebounded and the team's backcourt defence was shaky right through. Only in the third set till 12-13, Andhra fought but Tamil Nadu veered away to a comfortably victory.

Maharashtra took the women's bronze, beating Bengal at 25-16,11-25, 25-19, 25-21.

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