South Korea fifth in Asian junior handball

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

South Korea claimed fifth place overall in the 17th Asian Men’s Junior Handball Championship last night following a 33-26 victory over Iran in their final classification match played at the Khalifa Sports City arena in Isa Town. Also yesterday, Pakistan took seventh place after beating India 38-30 in their ranking contest at the same venue.

The two games confirmed the teams placed fifth through eighth to end the competition, which is being hosted by Bahrain and organised by the Bahrain Handball Association in cooperation with the Asian Handball Federation. Following yesterday’s fixtures, the tournament now heads into its final day today. The gold medal showdown between hometown favourites Bahrain and Japan is scheduled for a 7pm start. It will be preceded by the bronze medal game between losing semi-finalists Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which is scheduled for a 4pm start.

The Bahrainis will be hoping to secure their second title in the tournament’s history, to add to their first and only other triumph in the 1998 edition, which was also held in Bahrain. Japan, on the other hand, are looking to win the tournament for the first time. The final will be a rematch of the preliminary round contest between the two sides, which finished in a 31-all stalemate. In South Korea’s win yesterday, they took a 17-11 lead into the half and never looked back.

The East Asians led by as many as nine goals on multiple occasions in the final 30 minutes— last of which came following a Hyesung Cha effort that made it 32-23 with just over five minutes left on the game clock. Juseung Lee spearheaded the South Koreans with eight goals in the match, while Cha and Taegwan Kim each contributed seven goals.

Jeawoo Song chipped in with six goals for his team. Saeid Ali Akbari and Taha Shokouhipour paced Iran in the loss, finishing with five goals apiece. After the contest, Cha was named the Best Player of the Match and he received an award.

Fifth place overall was a disappointing ending for the South Koreans, who entered the competition as the defending champions having won the previous edition held in 2018. Meanwhile, in Pakistan’s win yesterday, they held their opponents scoreless for the first five minutes of the game and went ahead 19-10 at the interval.

India fought back valiantly the rest of the way and stayed within reach, but the Pakistanis did enough to maintain their advantage and close out the eightgoal winning margin. Muhammad Tayyab had a sensational performance, scoring 14 goals for the victors.

He was later selected as the Best Player of the Match. Muhammad Sahir added six and Muhammad Adeel had five for Pakistan. Vansh Thakran paced India with nine goals in the loss, while Arav Singh Chauhan chipped in with six. Pakistan were making their debut in the Asian junior championship this year while India were playing for the eighth time.