Qatar’s team (1) Cherif Younousse and Tijan Ahmed made a winning start to their 2021 Asian Beach Volleyball Championships campaign in Phuket, Thailand, on Tuesday as the Tokyo Games bronze medallist pair defeated Thailand’s Taovato Poravid and Tipjan Pithak 21-15, 21-19 to advance in stage phase of Group B. The other Team Qatar pair of Mahmoud Essam and Said Al Mageed, meanwhile, have been drawn in Group (H). FIVB World No.1 Ahmed Tijan/Cherif Younousse, who performed brilliantly to win bronze medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the first Olympic medal for Qatar and the first-ever beach volleyball medal in the Arab world and Asia since the Olympic beach volleyball debut in 1996 in Atlanta, have returned prove their worth at the Asian meet. The Qatari top seeds had already captured the Asian title for two times in a row in 2018 in Thailand and 2019 in China aside from handing Qatar the first beach volleyball gold in the 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia.