International volleyball tourneys start tomorrow

The Bangabandhu Asian Central Zone Men's Volleyball Challenge Cup and Bangamata Asian Central Zone Women's Volleyball Challenge Cup will get underway at the Shaheed Suhrawardi Indoor Stadium in Mirpur tomorrow, with last edition's runners-up Bangladesh taking on Maldives in the men's draw while the women's team of the host nation playing against Kyrgyzstan, the runners-up of last edition.

A total of six nations including hosts Bangladesh are taking part in the events. Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal are participating in the men's tournament while Kyrgyzstan will be taking part alongside the five aforementioned nations in the women's event.

The tournament, organised on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Bangladesh's victory and the birth centenary of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, saw its trophy and logo unveiled ceremony at Dhaka North City Corporation's conference hall yesterday.

Both the tournaments will be played in round robin format, with the top two teams qualifying for the finals, to be played on December 28.

While Bangladesh men's team have a pedigree in this event, having won the title in its second edition in 2016 before finishing second in the last edition, back in 2018, the women's team will be making only their second appearance in the event, the first one coming back two years ago.

At the trophy and logo unveiling programme yesterday, Atiqul Islam, president of the Bangladesh Volleyball Federation [BVF] and mayor of Dhaka North City Corporation, spoke about the challenges of organising the tournament during the pandemic.

"It was challenging to bring all the teams during this pandemic," Atiqul said. "We had to take permission from IVF [International Volleyball Federation] and AVC [Asian Volleyball Confederation] to organise these events," he said.

"We had some lacking in the previous tournaments. To compensate, we have brought in technical delegates from AVC to ensure the tournaments to be more successful," the president said as he went on to share his future plans with the sport.

"We want to spread this event all around the country, like schools, districts and age-level tournaments. We're also planning to organise Volleyball Premier League so that we can get more local players," Atiqul concluded.