The Botswana Volleyball men’s team, ranked fourth at the 2010 Men’s Volleyball World Championship qualifying tournament in Egypt, had their first game on Tuesday August 18th with the host team, Egypt, which beat them 3 nil.
According to the Confederation of African Volleyball, Egypt needed an hour to overcome Botswana in a match of effective services.
On the same day, the host team, Egypt, and Nigeria set their first victory on the first day of the 2010 World championship Africa Pool C tournament, after they defeated Botswana and Morocco, respectively at Cairo Stadium Complex.
The winning team at the Four Nation’s Tournament will determine the second African representative to join Tunisia at the world championships in Italy.
“Botswana adjusted their block and showed good resistance through the spikes of Shadrack Kapeko and the block of Francis Dingwe, but on time the Egyptian players regained the rhythm to win the set.”
The team did not perform badly on the second set which they played 25-21.
Coach Kabo Ntshinogang said Botswana started it as the better side through their solid block of Happy Rubbin and Tabaka Mothudi. Egypt arranged their attacks to penetrate Botswana defense and win the set 25-21.
Botswana team played their second match against Nigeria on Wednesday 19th, and tumbled as Nigeria walloped them 3 nil.
“The second set showed early improvement in Botswana performance due to their better reception and backline defense but later Nigeria overwhelmed the net action due to their more skillful front line players, led by the captain Emmanuel who led his team to win.
In the third set, Nigeria continued the same rhythm with the setter, Sunday Akapson, doing a great job.”
Egypt secured the second Africa ticket to Italy. They improved their win-loss ratio to 3-0 in the Four Nations tournament to lead the Africa Pool C with 6 points.
Nigeria dropped to 2-1 to finish second with 5 points. In the match third place match Morocco fought for 5 sets to achieve a difficult victory over Botswana with 4 points. They won it 3-2.
Botswana remained at the bottom of the pool with 3 points.
“Morocco struggled for 100 minutes to prevail over Botswana 3-2 (25-20, 21-25, 25-17, 22-25, 15-6) in a thrilling encounter passing through different variations. After Morocco won the first set, Botswana returned back through winning the second set. Morocco returned back to their rhythm and won the third set before the same controversy happened in the fourth set, but morocco returned back to win the tiebreak widely,”
Additional reporting by cav.
