Bangladesh volleyballers progress to top 12

Bangladesh emerged group champions to progress through to the next round -- featuring the top 12 teams -- of the 21st Asian Men's U20 Volleyball Championship despite suffering a nail-biting defeat to Australia in their pool's second and final match in Riffa, Bahrain tonight.

Bangladesh topped Group E with four points, one more than group runners-up Iraq, who had come back after losing to Bangladesh by beating Australia in their second match on Tuesday. Both three teams won one match each but Bangladesh were awarded one point against bottom-placed Australia as the match entered into the fifth set.    

The boys in red and green started brilliantly initially but surrendered the lead twice to suffer a 3-2 defeat to Australia.

Bangladesh, who arrived into the match on the back of a 3-1 set win over Iraq in their Pool E opener, beat Australia in the keenly contested first game with 31-29 before going down 25-18 in the second game, in which Bangladesh trailed six points at one stage and never came back the Australians, who lost 3-1 to Iraq in their opener on Tuesday.

Bangladesh, however, bounced strong in the third game and led from the first minute to notch up a 25-22 win to take the lead again with 2-1 sets.

Photo: BVF

Needed to win one of the last two games, Bangladesh could not perform as expected by trailing nine points at one stage as Australia dominated from the onset of the fourth set to level the margin 2-2 on set points with an empathic 25-17 win.

In the deciding set, Australia were, once again, in the driving seat despite Bangladesh tied scores on 5-5 points at one stage. However, the Australians were unstoppable as they snatched the final set 15-11 and wrapped up the victory.