Qatar, playing the Asian Men’s Volleyball Championship semi-finals for the first time, had an encouraging start but seven-time champions and traditionally tough Japan turned around the flow with their rich experience before pulling off a four-set victory in nearly two hours in Tehran on Friday.
Japan will clash with Iran on Saturday for the title as the hosts, egged on by a large vocal crowd, battled back from 0-2 sets down to pull off a thrilling 21-25 20-25 25-9 25-19 16-14 triumph. This is the fourth successive final for Iran, who had lost the 2009 title to Japan in Manila but clinched the next two editions.
At the Azadi Indoor Stadium, the Juan Manuel Cichello-tutored Al Annabi took to the court with determination to repeat the Pool F five-set victory over the same rivals. They took a positive first step, displaying guts and guiles and claimed the opening set.
However, Japan, who have won seven out of 10 finals in the previous 17 editions, used their depth to bounce back and complete a 22 25 25 23 25 17 25 23 triumph. The turning point for Qatar was the easy third set in which the Gulf team could not breach the Japanese defence.
In the fourth set, left-handed Shimizuu Kunihiro led his team through early difficult times and the Japanese went 19-14 ahead. Qatar fought back to cut down the margin to 17-20 and then 19-22 before Raimi Wadeedi was foiled, handing three match points to them (21-24).
Qatar rallied gamely again and saved two of them to come within a point of pulling level but Kunihara blasted the ball to book his team’s 11th appearance in the final. Besides this, Japan have already bagged three bronze medals, which shows their might and impressive record in the championships.
For Qatar, whose previous best finish was a seventh place in 2005, there are still hopes of coming home with a medal. They will take on China tomorrow and Qatar would try to exploit the low psychological state the Chinese might be into after losing the roller-coaster to the home team.
Qatari player Mubarak Dahi Waleed commented that his team could not match the experience of the Japanese and failed to thrive on a good start.”We played strong volleyball and pushed the rivals back. But they had much more experience than us and managed to overcome our challenge.
“I’d like to congratulate the coach and teammates for taking the team towards the best finish so far. Tomorrow is a different day and a different match. If we can repeat our today’s performance, we should hopefully be able to have a podium finish. This was our first ever semi-finals in the Asian championships.
“The job is not over for us. We’ve a strong reason to go out and push ourselves for one more match. We’ve played our best volleyball in the championship until now. All the players are trying to put in their maximum and that is a good sign for Qatari volleyball,” added Waleed.