Asian Games 2018 | Indian men’s handball team drawn alongside Bahrain, Chinese Taipei, and Iraq

With the 2018 Asian Games in Palembang, Jakarta fast approaching, a host of countries have stepped up their preparations in order to perform well at Asia’s most prestigious sporting event. India will be gunning for glory in Indonesia in August as the Indian athletes hope to do better than what they did in South Korea.

In relation to that, the Indian men’s handball team was included in the final draw that was held in Palembang recently and were drawn in group D alongside the likes of Bahrain, Chinese Taipei and Iraq. While group D contained four teams, the rest of the groups had only three.

The Indian team was included in the draw released by the Asian Games organizers even though it was not part of the Indian Olympic Association’s list of 534 athletes published on June 5.

The handball teams have been under the radar of the IOA as they have not fulfilled the criteria of being among the top eight teams in Asia. Their performance in competitions has been consistently poor and yet they have been given a preference while the Olympic body chose to overlook a more popular sport like football, where India have improved by leaps and bounds as they were now ranked 14 among Asian teams.

However, the women’s team were cleared by IOA and they are in five-team group which comprised South Korea, Kazakhstan, China and North Korea.