New Delhi, Sept 11: Tamil Nadu's Robinson will lead India in the 16-nation Asian Confederation Basketball Championships to be held in Harbin, China, from September 23 to October 1. Indian men are drawn in Group B with Korea, Kuwait and Malaysia in the event which will be played in league-cum-knockout format, a press release from the Basketball Federation of India said here today.


Hong Kong in Group A, China in Group C, and Japan in Group D are the hot contenders for the top honour in the championships. India qualified for the event by finishing second in the zonal championships in New Delhi earlier this year.

The 16 teams will play the preliminary round in groups of four with top two finishers moving into the quarterfinals which will be a super league with the last-eight -- divided into two groups -- locking horns with teams from other groups. The group stage will be followed by knock-out semifinals on September 30 and the final on October 1. The classification matches will be held simultaneously.

The squad: S Robinson, S Gopinath, S Sridhar, Gagnesh Kumar, Parminder Singh, Snehpal Singh, Murli Krishna, Desraj, Riazuddin, Trideep Rai, Mihir Pandey, S P Kadam.

Standby: Tinu Joseph and Binod Chowdhury.

Chief coach: K K Chansoria; coaches: P Ramar, Ch. Ramesh.

Bureau Report