It will be an acid test for Bangladesh national handball team as they are all set to take part in their maiden tour for South Korea participating in the 18th Asian Men’s Handball Championship, beginning from January 18 in Suwon, South Korea.
A1 8-member handball national team will be leaving tonight to face the best teams of Asia.
A total of 14 nations, split into four groups, will play the round-robin matches and top two teams from each group will advance to the second round of the championship, which is also served as the Asian Qualifiers for 2019 Men’s World Cup Handball.
Bangladesh, who along with Australia and New Zealand were given the direct entry for the first time, have been placed in Group C along with hosts South Korea, United Arab Emirates and neighbouring India.
“By taking part, we want to earn some valuable experience from the championship as we have never taken part in this tough level of competition. Besides the opponents in the group are very strong and we are yet to beat our strong neighbour India, whereas in this tourney, there are strong teams like South Korea ad UAE,” said national coach Qumrul Islam at a press conference at the Shaheed Captain Mansur Ali Handball Stadium on Sunday.
Bangladesh national handball team usually takes part in regional South Asian meets and their best results is that they became runners-up in last edition of South Asian Games losing to India. Besides, Bangladesh last year hosted the IHF U-21 Trophy handball where they also became runners-up losing to India.
Most surprisingly national handball team is going abroad with only eight-day training as the Bangladesh Handball Federation (BHF) could not afford to run a training camp for the team. “Actually we could not arrange the camp due to financial constraint but the fact is that the players have been in action as they recently played two tournaments – Victory Day Handball and National Handball Championship and that’s the preparation of the team,” said BHF general secretary Asaduzzaman Kohinoor.
BHF president Nurul Fazle Bulbul said that they have arranged some Tk 20 lakh out of estimated budget of Tk 35 lakh for the tour of South Korea.
