ONGC men to represent India in Fiba Asia Champions Cup

NAGPUR: Federation Cup winners, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Deharadun, will represent India in the 25th Fiba Asia Champions Cup, Asia’s premier basketball competition for clubs. The nine-day event will be played in the city of Chenzhou-Hunan, China, from October 8 to 16.
In the 10-team competition the Indian contingent has been placed in group A alongside Iran's Petrochimi, runners-up of previous edition Al Rayyan from Qatar, Lebanon's Al Riyadi and Pauian from Chinese Taipei.
The Preliminary round of the competition will be played in a round robin format, with every team taking on its four opponents in its respective group. The top four teams from each group will then advance to the quarterfinals.
The 24th edition was held in 2013 in Amman, Jordan, where Iranian club Foolad Mahan Isfahan emerged victorious. The Fiba Asia Champions Cup that started way back in 1981 was a yearly event since 1990 before being stopped in 2013. After a two-year break the club-level championship returns to Fiba’s regular competition format.
ONGC will kick start their campaign against Iran's Petrochimi on Sunday. India’s consistent scorer Vishesh Bhriguvanshi will lead the challenge for ONGC and is optimistic of a good show from his team. On ONGC’s chances and goal in the Champions Cup Bhriguvanshi said, “When we play for India, we have same goals for when we play for ONGC. So basically we aim to go there to perform well, play hard and try to upset some major teams.”
With no foreign import or guest player in the ONGC roster as compared to other participating teams, Bhriguvanshi says that will affect the performance a bit but wants his team mates to play hard. “We do not have any foreign players and that will definitely affect us, but we can’t do anything about that. All we can actually do is just focus, play hard and try to get good results,” he added.
The 12-member Indian team is a pretty balanced outfit that consists of three shooting guards and as many point guards and centers, a power forward and two guards.
The Team
India, ONGC: Vishesh Bhriguvanshi, Amritpal Singh, Mohit Bhandari, Vinay Dabas, Anoop Mukkanniyil, Trideep Rai, Abhishek Rai, Riyaz Uddin, Arjun Singh, Yadwinder Singh, Muraleekrishna Ravindran and Udai Bhan Singh Rawat.
Groups:
Group A: Petrochimi (IRI); Al Riyadi (LIB); ONGC (IND); Al Rayyan (QAT); Pauian (TPE).
Group B: Al Shorta (IRQ); Barsy Atyrau (KAZ); Westports Malaysia Dragons (MAS); Al Ahli (UAE); Xinjiang Flying Tigers (CHN).