India crush Thailand, meet Iran in final

Ahmedabad, October 21 

India and Iran won their respective semifinals to enter the final of the Kabaddi World Cup here today. The hosts made short work of Thailand, crushing them 73-20 to enter their third consecutive World Cup final, while Iran came from behind to overpower a spirited South Korea 28-22.

Saturday's final will be a clash between the two strongest nations in world kabaddi, who have a similar style of play. Both the teams have a power-based game, though the Indians are superior in technique. Iran, who also entered their third consecutive final, have lost to India in the previous two finals and will eye revenge.

Against Thailand, India dominated right from the start in both offence and defence. The Thai players found the Indians' style a bit too rough to handle with a couple of their players sustaining injuries. India's Pardeep Narwal scored 14 points and had a terrific game. 

Earlier, in a thrilling contest, Iran held their nerve to oust South Korea in a keenly fought contest. After a slow start, South Korea started dominating Iran and inflicted the first all out of the match in the 12th minute to lead 10-4. 

The Koreans led 12-6 after 15 minutes as their defence did a fine job. Iran began the second half strongly as they inflicted an all out in the 22nd minute to level the game at 15-15. They started playing aggressively from thereon and opened up a 19-15 lead by the 25th minute. Thereafter,  they never looked back. — IANS