Women retain kabaddi bronze

Bangladesh women kabaddi team's dreams of going one better in the Asian Games shattered yesterday when they suffered a massive 40-15 loss at the hands of Iran in the second semifinal at the Songdo Global University Gymnasium here.

They now had to remain content with the bronze medal, which they won in the 2010 Guangzhou Games, along with Thailand, who lost the first semifinal to defending champions India 41-28 earlier in the day.

Bangladesh had aimed at upsetting their mighty opponents but they never really looked in the game from the outset against a physically and technically sound opponents, who went beyond Bangladesh's reach by the first half as Iran took a 25-2 lead.

Bangladesh however produced a good fight after the break to earn 13 points compared to Iran's 15 but the efforts were not good enough as the gap had already been too wide.

Iran and India face off for the gold medal today.

"We did not expect to concede the defeat in such a way but the fact is that Iran is a much better team than India and I think Iran will go on to win the gold," said captain Shahnaj Parvin Maleka after the match.

Maleka however was a bit frustrated with the short-term training at home.

"To compete against teams like India and Iran, we should've trained for long but the fact is we always do short-term training each time. We should change this type of attitude in future," she said.