Qatar’s volleyball team bid farewell to the 2017 Asian Men’s Volleyball Championship after losing 2-1 to hosts Indonesia.
The Indonesians came away with a five-set 26-24, 25-14, 20-25, 21-25 and 15-11 victory to advance to the quarter-finals after finishing Group A in second place behind Kazakhstan.
This was the second loss of the Qatari team, who had won against Saudi Arabia 3-0 in their previous game.
Bojan Dukic top-scored with 13 points for Qatar including 11 kills from 21 attempts, but teammate Llija Ivovic topped the spiking attempts with 12 points.
Qatar finished third in the group ahead of Saudi Arabia, who claimed fourth and last place.
Meanwhile, in Pool B, Pakistan registered their first win after defeating Iraq in four dramatic sets 26-24 25-17 17-25 25-22 at the Wahana Ekspresi Poesponegoro Gymnasium yesterday.
Both Pakistan and Iraq were yet to win a match in the top-tier tournament coming into this game, having gone down against Chinese Taipei and Iran in their first two matches of Pool B.
Having suffered two successive losses, both the sides were already relegated to the 9th-16th classification round.
Aimal Khan scored a match-high 27 points for Pakistan including 23 kills from 47 attempts and 2 kill blocks, while Murad Jehan contributed 11 attack hits. Shamil Nameer led Iraq with 21 points from 16 kills, 3 blocks and 2 aces.
