The future always looked promising for young basketball stars in India, and the U18 team came out and proved it with three massive victories over their neighbouring countries to qualify for the 21st FIBA Asia U18 Championships! -says iSporter Karan Madhok.
India were always favourites to finish top in the Middle Asia Zone qualifying games against teams such as Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh, but few expected the dominance that the young cagers displayed over the three games, winning each with an average of an incredible 39 points.
The games were played at the Sri Kantaveera stadium in Bangalore from August 12-14th. India defeated Nepal in the first game 50-30, Bangladesh 91-44, and destroying a Sri Lankan side 84-44 in the finale.
India were led by great performances by individuals such as Arjun Singh, Dishant Shah, Shadab Khan, Amjyot Singh, and others.
Sri Lanka will qualify as a second place berth from the Middle Asia Zone along with India. Kazakhstan, who had a podium finish in the 2008 edition of the competition (they lost to hosts Iran in the finals), are an automatic qualifier to the event from the group. India have some way to go to improve on their previous performances, as they finished a measly 13th out of the 15 teams in the 2008 competition.
In the 2010 competition, set to be held in the city of Sana's in Yemen from Sep 22 - Oct 1, India will have a chance to face off against other qualified countries such as Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Philippines, Malaysia, China, and Japan.
The top three teams from this competition will play in the FIBA U19 World Championship 2011 in Latvia.
India's squad for the qualifiers was:
Ajay Pratap Singh (Chhattisgarh)
Sunny Raut (Madhya Pradesh)
Dishant Shah (Gujarat)
Rajan Sharma (Punjab)
Jaskaran Singh (Punjab)
Anant Singh (Rajasthan)
C. Berdinent Carmel Joseph (Tamil Nadu)
Bobby Singh (Uttar Pradesh)
Rakesh Kumar Yadav (Uttar Pradesh)
Arjun Singh (Indian Railways)
Shadab Khan (Indian Railways)
Amjyot Singh (Chandigarh)
Officials:
1. Mr. Ramkumar, Head Coach
2. V. Senthilselvan, Asst. Coach
3. Nilesh Shah, Physiotherapist
Karan Madhok, a die-hard hoops junkie and a die-harder confused desi, is author of the blog Hoopistani , your source for Basketball, India, Philosophy, and everything else in between...Follow Hoopistani on Facebook or Twitter .
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a guest
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... hello mr.karan madhok am greatly obliged by indian team basket ball performance.am glad to see other than cricket we are shining in every event.am glad people like you are covering it and puting on facebook where fans like us can get to know about this beautiful game.all my best wishes are with teama and am sure they will perform well.time has come for india to put its mark in every sport.would love to get more news on their devlopments. am a marine engineer by profession and am an ardent basketball and racing fan.whenever ship docks in us ports having nba teams and if i get chance to see i dont spare an oppurtuniyy.forntunatley have seen some matches.would love to see an indian player in nba team and wear his jersey. will be greatly obliged if you could me posted about team developments. my email id jvijayk@yahoo.com regds vijay krishna |
a guest
said:
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... Hi Vijay, Thank you for all your support, Are you based in Mumbai? Nilesh - physiotherapist |
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