TEHRAN, Dec. 01 (MNA) – Iranian men’s national wheelchair basketball team conceded a defeat against Japan on the second day of 2019 International Wheelchair Basketball Federation (IWBF) Asia Oceania Championships in Thai city Pattaya.

Japan gained a 71-51 win over Iran on Sunday while two of its players namely Fujimoto and Furusawa registered double-digit scores of 18 and 16 respectively. Omid Hadiazhar of Iran scored a match-high of 21 points.

Iran had won its first game in the competition on Saturday against China. The team will lock horns with the defending champion Australia on Monday.

Fourteen men’s teams and eight women’s teams will compete in the championships in a bid to qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. The Asia Oceania Zone has four spots available for the men and three spots available for the women at Tokyo 2020, with one spot in each competition already allocated to Japan as host country, as reported by IWBF.

In the men’s competition the six top ranked teams – Australia, Iran, Japan, Korea, China, and Thailand – will play in Division A, which will be a single round robin to determine 1-6 in the ranking. The other eight teams – Afghanistan, Chinese Taipei, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia – will be drawn into two pools of four in Division B and will also play in a single round robin to determine placing, followed by crossovers, semi-finals and then a final to determine which are the top two teams in Division B.

Once Division B has concluded, the top two teams will become the 7th and 8th ranked teams in Division A to make up the quarter-final pairings. Teams 9 to 14 will play ranking games to decide lower placings.

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