Qatar’s No 2 team, featuring Abdelaziz Khallouf and Tamer Abdelrasoul, bowed out of the Qatar Open Beach Volleyball Tournament on Thursday, but not before their gritty fight lighting the Qatar Beach Volleyball Academy court in Al Gharafa Club.
With the top local pair of Tiago Santos and Jefferson Santos Pereira pulling out of the third and last group match due to a leg injury to the former and third duo, Assam Mahmoud and Sultan Asif, losing again, all the hopes of a sizeable crowd, which was dancing and cheering, were pinned on Khallouf and Abdelrasoul. And they did not disappoint them too.
It was a crucial match for the local players and Canadians Cameroon Wheelan and Michael Plantinga, the 19th seeds. Both the pairs had lost two matches apiece and the winners in this last group C match were guaranteed a place in the second round.
After denying five set points in the opener to the Canadians, Khallouf and Abdelrasoul saved four match points in the second. They also came within point of forcing the decider. But a Wheelan’s volley sealed their 21-17 21-19 victory and the fate of Qataris in 31 minutes.
Tamer, who produced some fine digs with dives, said,”This was the first time for us to be playing on the World Beach Volleyball Tour. We had to win to in order to move into the second round. The level of all the players is quite high. We tried to play as best as we can.
“We pushed the Canadians a bit towards the end of both the sets. But we could not pull any of the sets off. However, it was a good tournament for us. We learnt many things here. We’ll continue to work hard,” added the left-handed Abdelrasoul.
“In two week’s time, we’ll go to Phuket to play on the Asian tour. We hope to use the experience of the Qatar Open and get good results there,” he added.
His teammate Khallouf was happy with the opportunity to get three good matches in the group league.”We got to play three tough matches against the big players in the world. Our match today was close. If we had won the second set after a strong comeback, anything could have happened in the third set.
“Overall, I’m proud to play for Qatar in this top-level event. It was a valuable learning experience for us. We made attempt to match the levels of the other teams in the pool. If we keep up our development work and get more chances to play on the world tour, we’ll certainly get better and secure encouraging results,” added the net specialist Khallouf.
Wheelan heaved a sigh of relief for moving into the elimination round.”Yeah, they fought very well. We just got a little nervous at the end. We had never really been in such a position before. We have only played one FIVB before (Anapa Open) and we got knocked out of the pool pretty early.
“So knowing that we are very close to winning, we were just a bit nervous this is something we’ve to work out as a team. This is a constant communication that we have to work on.”
Talking about the venue, Wheelan said,”Oh, this is a world class tournament. The hospitality has been very good and we’ve got a good hotel. Everything is so nice.”
Two upsets in first round
Later in day, two upsets results marked the elimination round. Third seeds Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Toms Smedins from Latvia were knocked out by Danes Martin Olesen and Peter Kildegaard in straight sets. It was only in the second set that the Latvians tried to make a match of it but the Danish team was strong enough to respond and win by 21-13 21-18 in 33 minutes.
Sixteenth seeds Ruslan Bykanov and Serguei Prokopiev caused another flutter when the Russians secured a thrilling 2-1 victory over eighth seeds Dimitriy Yakovlev and Alexey Kuleshov.
Bykanov and Prokopiev lost the opening set very close. But they struck back and reeled off the next two sets in 52 minutes to complete the second upset result of the first round.