RAIPUR: Deepak Agrawal, a 2016-batch IAS officer, led the Indian Woodall team that gave a formidable performance in the first Asian Cup Beach Woodball Championship 2024 in South Korea and 8th Korea open woodball championship that concluded on August 30. The team returned home with a bronze medal.
“Our next goal is to aspire for a gold medal. I came to know about the Woodball game in 2018. The sport has all the excitement and thrill with the players expected to remain keenly on alert mode, aiming and in command”, said Agrawal who felt that there is a need to promote the Woodball game.
Before proceeding to South Korea, the Indian team carried out sports training at the bank of river Pairi in Gariyaband. The practice proved quite advantageous for the players to gear-up as part of their workout plan for weeks and prop-up their skills for the game.
Woodball as a sport began in the year 1990 in Taiwan. It is played with a wooden mallet and wooden balls. The wood ball has similarities to sports action in golf. It is played by striking the wooden balls through the gates via successive strokes in accordance with the specified rules.
Besides India, the team from Mongolia, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan, China, Hong-Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand participated in the championship. Taiwan won the gold while the silver medal went to Korea and India as second runner-up got bronze.
The team comprises six players and there could be single, double and mixed doubles events.
In the Indian team led by the Gariyaband collector, other members were Jitendra Patel who is secretary Indian Woodall Association, Lalit Dangi, Virat Parmar, Tahul Chavan and Pran Pratim Chalia.