The Nepali team, which includes seven new faces, has set a target of reaching the final of the tournament, which also features teams from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
Young players Kul Bahadur Thapa, Milan Malla, Raj Bahadur Chaudhary, Mahendra Shrestha, Raj Kumar Thapa, Chandra Kunwar and Pushpa Jung Thapa are all set to make their national team debuts at the championship. Captain Kailash Bhatta, Sanjay Aryal, Sunil Shrestha, Im Rana Magar and Khushi Chaudhary are the experienced players in the team. Among them, Bhatta and Aryal were part of the national team during the 10th South Asian Games (SAG) in Colombo and the 11th SAG in Dhaka, while the other three had only participated in the Dhaka SAG.
"We have a balanced team and we can expect good games from it. However, we have not played any international tournament since the 11th SAG. Our team is largely inexperienced at the international level," coach Kapil Kishor Shrestha told Republica. "On the other hand, teams like Sri Lanka have highly experienced players as they have been playing regularly at the international level," he added.
Coach Shrestha claimed that the Nepali team has confidence despite its inexperience at the international level. "Nepal Volleyball Association (NVA) organized several domestic tournaments last year and it has given confidence to the players," said Shrestha.
Shrestha said that his team did not get enough time to undergo weight training due to which the players could not improve much on their jumps. "Our players have good endurance level but our problem is jump. Compared to the Sri Lanka team, our boys are behind in terms of jump. Spike jump and block jump are crucial in volleyball," said Shrestha.
The top two teams of the round robin league will qualify for the final of the championship. "We don´t know much about the Afghanistan team whereas we have seen the Maldives team in a practice match. Analyzing available data about the height of the players and their jumps, we are behind Sri Lanka," said Shrestha, "Thus, our first aim is to defeat Afghanistan and the Maldives to reach the final," he added.
However, Shrestha said the team has taken the championship as an opportunity to get more exposure. "We hope to reach the final but we are approaching the tournament as an exposure for our national team so as to get an idea about our standard and weaknesses. We want to prepare our national team for the upcoming SAG and other international tournaments on the basis of our performance in this tournament," said Shrestha.
Meanwhile, Kailash Bhatta, who replaced the longest serving national team captain Bharat Shah last week, said inclusion of new faces made the team stronger. "Other teams could have physical advantage over us as they have taller than us. However, we´ll work hard and play mind games to upset them," said Bhatta. "Also, we are good at open spike and quick spike," claimed the newly-appointed captain.
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