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The Indian women’s volleyball team will be one of the 14 teams in action at the Asian Women’s Volleyball Championship 2023 in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand from August 30 to September 6. The week-long tournament will be played at two venues – Korat Chatchai Hall and The Mall Korat’s MCC Hall.
Now in its 22nd edition, the Asian Women’s Volleyball Championship is being held after a gap of four years. The biennial volleyball event was cancelled in 2021 due to COVID-19. The top three teams from the competition will qualify for the 2025 FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship.
The competition will be conducted in three phases – the preliminary round, the classification round and the knockout round. The 14 teams have been slotted into four groups for the prelims. Pool A and B have three teams each while Pool C and D will feature four teams.
Volleyball Team and Pools
Pool A: Thailand, Australia, Mongolia
Pool B: Japan, Iran, India
Pool C: South Korea, Chinese Taipei, Vietnam, Uzbekistan
Pool D: China, Kazakhstan, Hong Kong, Philippines
India, 68th in the world rankings, have been placed in Pool B alongside defending champions Japan, world No. 8, and 65th-ranked Iran. The People’s Republic of China, world No. 6, are the most successful side in the tournament with 13 titles. They are in Pool D.
The top two teams from each of the four groups in the preliminary round make it to Pool E and F while the remaining teams are drawn into Pools G and H of the classification round.The two top teams from Pool E and F will make the top four (semi-finals) while all remaining teams will play to achieve the best-possible placements.
The top four teams will play in the semi-finals on September 5 while the third-place match and the final will be held on September 6.India’s best performance in the tournament came in 1979, when they finished seventh on their debut. The Indian women’s volleyball team registered consecutive 10th-place finishes in the 2017 and the 2019 editions.
A 12-member squad will represent India at the Asian Women’s Volleyball Championship 2023.
INDIAN SQUAD
Jini KS, Maria Sebastian, Nirmal, Shaalini, Saranya, Ezhilmathi, S Soorya, Shilpa, Anusree Ghosh, Minimol, Anagha and Ananya Das
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