Iran name their 12 for the Asian Games, and India are still cutting from 29

Iran picked their kabaddi squad for the Asian Games on Monday, and it took longer to spell the names than to guess them. Twelve players, Fazel Atrachali captaining at 34, Mohammadreza Shadloui and Mohammad Esmail Nabibakhsh both in. The change is on the bench, not the mat.

The twelve, and the new man in charge

Navvab Tazehghale, who has coached Iran’s junior side, takes the team to Japan in place of Gholamreza Mazandarani. That is not a small handover. Mazandarani was the coach when Iran won the 2018 gold in Jakarta, the only time in the history of Asian Games kabaddi that the men’s title has gone anywhere other than India.

His squad reads: Fazel Atrachali (captain), Mohammadreza Shadloui, Reza Mirbagheri, Alireza Mirzaeian, Amirmohammad Zafardanesh, Mohammad Esmail Nabibakhsh, Ali Samadi, Amirhossein Bastami, Amirhossein Ejlali, Heider Ali Ekrami, Omid Khojasteh and Ali Eyvozi.

Set that against the 18 Iran carried into their most recent camp list at the end of July, and Milad Mohajer, Amirreza Ali Akbari, Abolfazl Nouriyan and Amirhossein Taghipour are among the names who have gone. Nobody unexpected came in to replace them. This is the group Iran has been building around for two years, with the corners covered by Bastami and Ejlali and the heavy lifting in defence left to Fazel and Shadloui, two men Indian audiences have watched at close range for the better part of a decade in the Pro Kabaddi League.

Where India and Iran can actually meet

Kabaddi at the Aichi-Nagoya Games runs from 21 to 26 September at the Tokai Citizens Gymnasium, with the group stage over the first four days, semi-finals on the 25th and both finals on the 26th. The men’s draw keeps India and Iran apart until the knockouts. India are in Group A with Japan, South Korea, Chinese Taipei and Bangladesh. Iran are in Group B with Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia and Thailand.

The women’s draw is less forgiving. India and Iran are in the same group there, alongside Japan and Bangladesh, so that one gets settled in the first week whatever else happens.

India are still cutting

Iran have their 12. India, six weeks out, have a shortlist. The Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India started with 45 men in the first national camp in Bellary, trimmed that to 29 for the second, and has to get to 14 before Japan. Pawan Sehrawat, Naveen Kumar, Ashu Malik, Arjun Deshwal and Aslam Inamdar are all in the mix, which is a lot of raiding for a squad that can only carry so many.

There is a reason the Indian calendar looks unhurried and Iran’s looks finished. Reports now put the PKL 13 auction in late October, after the Games rather than before them, so the domestic season is not pulling at the camp the way it usually does. That helps the selectors. It also means nobody has played competitive kabaddi in front of a crowd for a while.

The last two times these teams played for something

In Jakarta in 2018, Iran beat India 27-18 in the semi-final and then took the title 26-16 against South Korea. It ended a run of seven straight Indian golds going back to 1990, and Iran’s women won the other title at those Games, beating India 27-24.

Five years later in Hangzhou, India got it back, 33-29, in a final that stopped for about an hour over a lobby-rule dispute in the closing minutes before the points were awarded to India. That was India’s eighth gold. Iran have finished second in three Asian Games finals against India and first in the one they did not have to play them in.

Fazel has been on the mat for most of that history. He was captain in 2018 and he is captain again now, at an age when defenders usually start being described as veterans by people who have run out of other things to say about them. Iran named him first on the list. India will name their 14 soon enough, and the interesting question is whether the men picking it think a raid-heavy squad is the answer to a corner pairing that has been together this long.

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