Kabaddi World Cup: fingers crossed, whether India-Iran will again make it to finals

Ahmedabad: In the semifinals of the Kabaddi World Cup 2016 to be played here tonight everybody will keep their fingers crossed to see whether the final tomorrow will again be the repetition of the earlier two editions when India and Iran had locked horns for the title or any different this time around.

Iran will be playing Korea in the first semifinal while India will take on Thailand later tonight in the second pre-final encounter.

The current edition of the world cup is only the third one so far.

India had defeated Iran easily by 55-22 in the first Kabaddi world cup (international format) in Mumbai in 2004. In the second edition held in Panvel in Raigad district of Maharashtra in 2007 the two teams again reached the finals and have comparatively a tougher fight with India again lifting the cup by beating Iran 29-19,

This time around a strongly emerged Korea, which with its stunning ‘fight-back’ games, can pose a tuff challenge for Iran in the Semifinals. Korea had stunned the world by defeating India in the opening encounter and had won all its five league matches. Iran had won four of its five league matches with an unexpected defeat by Poland.

India will be taking on Thailand which showed a great fighting skill to reach the final four by defeating Japan in a thrilling encounter in the last league match of the tournament on October 19.
The third edition of Kabaddi World Cup in Ahmedabad organised by International Kabaddi Federation has seen participation of 12 teams – India, Iran, Bangladesh, Japan, Korea, Australia, Kenya, England, USA, Thailand, Poland, and Argentina – battling it out for the world title.

India, which is also 7 times Asian Games winner,was in Group A with Korea, Australia, England, Bangladesh and Argentina While Iran with Thailand, Japan, the USA, Poland and Kenya were in Group B.

DeshGujarat