Defending champions Qatar were given an almighty fright by India yesterday before sending them to the verge of elimination from the Asian Games tournament, with Bangladesh also looking at an early trip home.
India took the lead, but the Qataris battled back to score twice in the final 10 minutes of their Group D game and secure a 2-1 win. It left the Indians with no points and virtually no hope of qualifying for the knockout rounds.
Singapore are also in trouble after crashing 2-0 to Kuwait, leaving them with just a point to show from their two games and a must-win clash with India tomorrow.
Photo: AFP
The Kuwaiti win, secured with first-half goals by Ali Almaqseed and Mashari Alazmi, ensured they booked their place in the last 16.
Thailand also stayed on course with a 1-1 draw against Oman, but coach Bryan Robson, the former England skipper, was disappointed not to have clinched three points.
Bangladesh lost 3-0 to the United Arab Emirates.
In other games, Hong Kong’s Chan Wai Ho struck a 60th minute winner to give them a crucial 1-0 victory over Uzbekistan, while the Maldives and Pakistan ground out a goalless draw.
Qatar created the best of the first-half chances, but the champions were made to pay for their wastefulness when India snatched the lead in the 18th minute.
Qatar failed to clear a corner and Ravanan Dharmaraj managed to get the ball past goalkeeper Sofyan Ahmed.
Qatar, coached by former Ajax and Porto boss Co Adriaanse, put the brittle Indian defense under siege in the second half and their resistance was finally broken with 10 minutes left when Ali Jaralla looped a header into the net.
Jaralla then grabbed the winner two minutes from time with a left-foot shot which found the corner of the net.
Adriaanse insisted that being defending champions poses no problems for his side.
“We are not facing Brazil or Germany,” he said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier