Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan, September 2, 2022 – Hosts Kyrgyzstan look to heap revenge on Saudi Arabia when both sides sealed their Friday’s semifinals wins to set up the highly-anticipated final showdown of the 3rd AVC Men’s Challenge Cup at the Sports and Recreation Complex Gazprom.
Saudi Arabia
In the electrifying semifinals, Kyrgyzstan, current world No.104, put it past fighting Mongolia in closely-contested straight sets 25-22, 25-21, 25-23, while Saudi Arabia, the only team which have yet lost a match to their respective opponents, faced a daunting challenge from Uzbekistan to pull off dramatic four-set win 25-23, 25-23, 23-25, 25-20.
Kyrgyzstan
In the Saturday’s championship match, world No.76 Saudi Arabia, which finished 12th at the last year’s Japan-hosted Asian Senior Men’s Championship in Chiba ad Funabashi, are due to face off with Kyrgyzstan. On August 31, the final day of the single pool round-robin preliminaries, the Saudi Arabians completed their campaign in the pool plays on the top of the 4-team standing after a 3-1 rout of the host side.
Mongolia
The bronze-medal match will be contested between world No.142 Mongolia and Uzbekistan, current world No.86 and 13th place at the last year’s topflight Asian Championship, to vie for bronze medal. Mongolia also have their sights firmly set on repeating the feat again as they had already beaten Uzbekistan 3-2 in their preliminary round. The Uzbek squad have their fingers crossed and hope to give their best on Saturday.
Uzbekistan in battle against Saudi Arabia in semifinals
Ahead of their last day in the competition, the four participating teams stood an equal chance of resting on Thursday, which helped their teams recover after their setbacks, disappointment and hurdles. It seemed they were ready to continue fight for the two spots up for grabs in the Saturday’s showdown. However, only two teams made it, with the remaining two relegated to the bronze-medal encounter.
Saudi Arabia beat Uzbekistan 3-1
Fourth-ranked Uzbekistan came into this tough match against Saudi Arabia on a three-game losing streak. The Saudi Arabians finished on top of the standing after the preliminaries and they had already beaten Uzbekistan 3-2.
Despite some improvement from the underdogs, Saudi Arabia were on a different level with their powerful hitters particularly outstanding. Ahmed Albakheet, Nawaf Albakheet and Omar Alnajrani became the Three Musketeers who were instrumental in lifting the team’s…
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