AYG Beach Volleyball: Indonesia, Thailand, Yemen and Kazakhstan share boys’ semi-finals spots

Story by Colin Tung/Red Sports. Pictures by Lai Jun Wei/Red Sports.

Siloso Beach, Sentosa, Saturday, July 4, 2009 – On a bright, windy morning at Sentosa’s Siloso Beach, the quartet of Indonesia, Thailand, Yemen and Kazakhstan won their quarter-final ties this morning to progress to the boys’ semi-finals taking place this afternoon.

With the East Asian tigers dominating all the other Asian Youth Games’ (AYG) semi-finals, it was refreshing to see none at this one event.

Three out of the four teams, with the exception of Yemen who had to go to the rubber set against Chinese Taipei, won their quarter-final matches in two sets.

Playing on centre court at 10am was Indonesia and Bahrain. After a cagey start, the Indonesian duo of Gede Eka Agustiawan and Ade Chandra Rachmawan closed out the first set with a 4-0 run to take it 21-16.

Having gotten the initial jitters out of the way and fired up after losing the first set, Bahrain’s Hammad Mohammed and his partner Sultan Ali raced to a 7-2 lead which they subsequently built to 13-7.

From that point on though, it spiralled downwards for the Bahrainis. A series of good strikes and blocks with a service ace thrown in as well allowed the Indonesians to level up at 13-13.

The Bahraini duo grew more cautious and still found themselves with the lead at 19-17. But the Indonesian supporters urged Gede and Ade on and they responded to close out the game 23-21.

The Indonesians displayed sound understanding of each other but it was nerves that allowed their opponents to establish their 13-7 lead in the second half before overtaking them for the eventual win.

“We were not relaxed,” admitted the 1.80m tall Gede. “But still there was no out, no (shots into the) net, good defence, good spiking.”

Over at court one at the same time, Thailand set up their semi-final match with Indonesia with a convincing 21-16, 21-12 win over Oman, who had beaten Singapore’s Melvin Goh and Qing Shan yesterday to qualify for the quarter-finals.

The second match of the day on centre court was between Chinese Taipei and Yemen. The Yemeni pair of Omair Ashraf Saeed Saeed (1.91m) and Sheikh Mohammed Salem Haidarah (1.86m), displayed an obvious height advantage at the net over the Taiwanese pair of Chen Che-Ming (1.82m) and Juan Shang-Hsuan (1.76m) as they met to shake hands before the start of the game.

Chen and Juan, though, seeked to prove that height was no limitation as they nailed the first set 21-19.

Omair and Sheikh began to impose their authority at the net in the second set as they launched more successful spikes and blocks, which helped them to take the second set 21-16.

In the rubber set, Chen and Juan could not find a way past the Yemeni height as they slumped 10-15 to bow out of the competition at the quarter-final stage.

They were visibly disappointed after the match and Juan commented: “We played to our standards but they are simply taller. We also made several mistakes such as service errors. We are quite disappointed we didn’t meet our goal of a top-four placing.”

Despite dropping a set, the Yemeni team coach Sami Abdullak was happy with the result. He shared, “They had been very nervous and conceded the opening set.”

While the South-east Asian neighbours battle for a rightful place in the final on centre court, the Yeminis will take on Kazakhstan for a ticket to the final in the afternoon semi-finals.