Igor kolakovic’s men didn’t show a quality performance in the first two sets and even the team’s captain and setter Saied Marouf made some errors that surprised the spectators.
The situation changed in the third set when Pourya Ali entered the pitch to show some great spikes and secure the set for Iran combined with efforts of other players, especially Milad Ebadipour.
Spirited up, Iranian players moved side by side of the Russians in the fourth set but a wide spike by Farhad Ghaemi in the last five points was enough to widen the gap and lead to a win for 2019 VNL winners.
Ebadipour and Yaroslav Podlesnykh led the scoring for both teams with 18 points while Russia recorded three other double-digit scorers.
The Iranian team, who have just claimed the Asian trophy at home on September 21, didn’t have enough time to recover for the World Cup but technical staff again preferred to field the top guns in the prestigious event in Japan.
A total of 12 teams which are top two teams of each continent, plus Japan as host and Poland as World champion, are participating in the World Cup underway in Japan a round-robin format.
Iran will next face Egypt on Wednesday before taking on Canada on Friday.
MAH