'This time our team is better'

The Bangladesh national volleyball team returned home on Sunday from a fruitful 21-day training camp in Iran, the eighth ranked country in world volleyball, which was a part of their preparations for this month's Bangabandhu Asian Senior Men's Central Zone Volleyball Championship.

The 18-member squad selected by the Bangladesh Volleyball federation played six practice matches in Tehran against different Iranian clubs, including an Iran Super League side, and won four games against two defeats.

“The tour will help us display better shows in the championship because we applied new techniques, which are now followed by the world's top nations like Brazil, United States of America, Russia, Japan and South Korea, in training and successfully executed those techniques in the practice matches,” said captain Horosit Biswas yesterday.

“The Iranian coach [Alipour Aroji] is also happy to see our development and believed the improvement we had during 21 days was not possible even in two-months of training in Bangladesh because we have not only improved technically but also physically,” Horosit added.

Horosit also believes that the clubs they played against in the practice matches are stronger than certain South Asian national teams like Nepal, Maldives and Afghanistan.

“The Iranian clubs are stronger compared to Maldives, Nepal and Afghanistan because those clubs have professional players, who play volleyball regularly. So, this tour will undoubtedly help us display some good performances in the upcoming championship,” Horosit said. “This time our team is better than the one which clinched the title of Asian Senior Men's Central Zone Volleyball Championship in 2016 because three new players have been included.”

Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Maldives, Neal and Afghanistan are supposed to take part in the championship, which gets underway from April 21 at the Shaheed Suhrawardi Indoor Gymnasium in Mirpur.