It was a good outing for the national sepak takraw team after finishing on the podium for two out of the three events contested at the 29th King's Cup Sepak Takraw Championship 2014 in Thailand.
They returned home yesterday with one silver and one bronze medals to their name. The silver medal came from the doubles event after the team lost 2-0 (21-19, 21-16) to the Philippines in the final on Wednesday. They bagged the bronze as losing semi-finalists in the regu event after losing 2-0 (21-14, 21-16) to Laos the next day.
Brunei also contested in the team event but lost both their games 3-0 to Korea and hosts Thailand respectively. Amin Maharil, Akmal Hamimi, Shahrin Bubin and Aliffuddin Jamaludin are the other four players on the squad. Head coach Hj Zaman Hj Samat was pleased with the performance of the 12-player squad and believes that there is still plenty of room for improvement.
"The overall performance of the team was quite good. But there is room for improvement still so that we can compete against the likes of Thailand, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Myanmar," said Hj Zaman in an interview with The Brunei Times upon arrival at the Brunei International Airport yesterday.
The August 4-10 tournament was used a warmup for the upcoming 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, Korea. Seven players that competed in the doubles and regu events have been chosen for the Sep 19 - Oct 4 competition.
