Indian cagers crash out of China tourney

Beijing: The two Indian men’s basketball teams - Bangalore and Chandigarh - crashed out of the 3x3 FIBA World Tour - Beijing Masters after losing their respective league games at the Wukesong Mastercard Stadium here on Saturday.

Team Bangalore, who were seeded ninth, gave a tough fight to eighth seeded local team Zheng Zhou in the opening match of their campaign in Pool A before going down 18-21.

The team, which comprises senior Indian team campers that won the 3x3 South Asian Qualifiers in Colombo a few weeks ago, then suffered a 13-21 loss to top seeds NoviSad AlWahda of UAE in their second and final league match.

Meanwhile, the young Chandigarh team, seeded 12th and placed in Pool D, lost to Tokyo Japan (4th seeds) 12-21, and to hometeam Wukesong (5th seeds) 13-21 later in the evening.

Despite the defeats, a bright spot for India was the scoring abilities of Bangalore centre Jeevanantham Pandi. His 16 points was the second highest individual tally after two league games among all the 48 players in the tournament.

Siddhant Shinde of the Bangalore team and Kushmeet Atwal from Chandigarh have registered in the shootout contest to be held on Sunday.