India loses to Saudi Arabia and will play their next match in Beirut, which will take place against Lebanon.
In the second round of the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 Asian Qualifiers, which took place on Thursday at the King Abdullah Sports City in Jeddah, the Indian men’s basketball team was defeated by Saudi Arabia by a score of 85-54. Saudi Arabia won Group E of the competition.
India was led in scoring by Seijin Mathew with 10 points, while Saudi Arabia was represented by Hazim Bader A Aljohar and Khalid M Abdel Gabar, who both scored 16 points for their country.
The basketball players from Saudi Arabia and India were neck-and-neck throughout the first quarter, but Saudi Arabia was able to regain the initiative and finish the first quarter with a 19-14 advantage over India.
Saudi Arabia kept riding the wave and created a 16-point advantage for themselves early on in the second quarter of the game
However, power player Seijin Mathew and shooting guard Lokendra Singh, who is only 17 years old but scored nine points in the game, pulled off amazing drives to cut the lead to ten points by the time the first half was up.
At the beginning of the second half, the score was 38-28 in favor of Saudi Arabia. However, the Indian basketball team made a furious comeback and trimmed the Saudi Arabian advantage to five points, 43-38. However, India failed to capitalize on easy scoring opportunities and entered the last ten minutes of the game down 66-47.
In the last quarter, India, who is rated 85th in the world, showed signs of being a threat; however, Saudi Arabia, which is ranked 73rd in the world, raced away with the game by scoring 19 points as opposed to India’s seven points in the final quarter.
In the qualifying round for the FIBA World Cup 2023, the Indian basketball team has not yet triumphed in a game. The first round ended with India losing all four of their games, and they have already dropped three of their matches in the second round. After their defeat against Saudi Arabia, they still have three more games to play, but it is quite unlikely that they will advance to the next round of the basketball World Cup.
The next encounter for India will be on Saturday, and it will be played against Lebanon at the Pierre Gemayel Arena in Beirut (local time). In any of the 18 previous iterations of the FIBA Basketball World Cup, India has never been able to earn a spot in the tournament’s main draw.
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