India Railways retain World Railway Volleyball title

KOCHI: Indian Railways men’s

volleyball

team retained the

World Railway Volleyball Championship

with a 3-1 (25-21, 25-20, 24-26, 25-19) win over

Belarus

in Albena, Bulgaria.


It was India’s third title at the world event; the first one was secured in France in 2003 before Belarus proved the lucky turf in 2015, when India edged Russia for their second title. In the edition held before that India had to settle for a bronze.

Sanjay Malik

captained the side that also comprised current Indian attacker Prabhagaran besides Manu Joseph and libero Prabakaran. The trio was also part of the team that triumphed four years ago. Seetharam Raju, Ragul G, Sourabh Maan, Vikas Singh, Lakbir Singh, Rohith Kumar, Vipul Kumar and Aman Kumar were the other members of the winning side that had Kerala’s TC Jothish as head coach.

“It feels great to win back to back world titles,” said Manu Joseph. “I wouldn’t say the championship was tougher than last time but we met quite a competition from Russia and Belarus in particular. Their floating serves were a bit difficult to deal with,” Manu told TOI from Bulgaria.

Jothish feels having sufficient time to prepare for the event helped them in their campaign. “In fact we had two 21-day camps in the build up and all we had to do was execute the plans and I am glad the boys did a great job,” said Jothish. The coach singled out Prabhagaran and Manu Joseph for having a significant impact in the team’s performances.