Doha: Qatar finished their group phase campaign of the 24th Men’s Handball world Championship on a winning note to finish second in the group.
Yesterday at Losail Multipurpose Hall the hosts defeated Belarus 26-22 in a closely contested match.
Everything was set in Group A before the start of the last match. Qatar had qualified for the pre-quarter-finals and were sure to finish second in the group after Spain, while Belarus had lost their last hope of reaching the last 16 with Brazil’s win against Chile earlier in the evening.
In a game, where only the honour was at stake for both sides, Belarus got the better start and went up 4-2 followed by several further two-goal leads.
Towards half time, the Belarusians even increased to five goals at 11-6 which made Qatar coach Valero Rivera take his second time out with two and a half minute left of the first half.
This could not prevent Belarus from still being five goals up at half time, at which point they were leading 12-7.
The aggressive Belarusian defence with left wing Ivan Brouka pushing forward in a 5-1 formation frustrated the Qataris who had difficulties in the attack in the first 30 minutes.
In the second half, Qatar played much more like their previous matches and it only took them 10 minutes to catch up with the Belarusian’s five-goal lead from half-time 14-14.
Exactly one minute later, the hosts even took the lead for the first time since 1-0, as they made it 15-14.
From that point on, Qatar left no real doubt about what the result would be.
The one-goal lead was extended to four, and even though Belarus managed to reduce the distance to two goals a couple of times, they never got any closer and at the end, Qatar took a four-goal win.
Right back Zarko Markovic scored nine times for Qatar while Dzianis Runtenka scored seven for Belarus.
Earlier, at the same venue Brazil defeated Chile 30-22 to qualify for the pre-quarter-finals.
At Duhail Sports Hall, Spain defeated
Slovenia 30-26 to finish on top of the group. The 2013 winners now will play against Tunisia in the pre-quarter-finals knockout stage.
On Sunday, Qatar will take on Austria, while Brazil will face Croatia. In another match, Macedonia square to Slovenia. The Peninsula
