India’s Manidurai Naveen Raja Jacob spikes against Japan’s Kunihiro Shimizuin in Incheon. India won against Qatar to finish at 5th place in the Asian Games on Friday. (Source: PTI)

India prevailed over Qatar 3-2 in a hard-fought contest to finish fifth in the men’s volleyball competition at the 17th Asian Games in Incheon on Friday.

In men’s 5th-6th place classification match at the Songnim Gymnasium, the Indians rallied to beat the Qataris 25-21 20-25 25-22 20-25 15-10 in a keenly contested match, which lasted an hour and 47 minutes.

The match swung from one end to another before India managed to have the last laugh. India finished with a total of 105 points as against 103 scored by their opponents.

The Indians started brilliantly and pocketed the first set 25-21 in 22 minutes, but Qatar got their act together soon to drew parity by winning the next one 25-20 to level the scores 1-1.

The Indians fought back to restore their lead by winning the third set 25-22 but failed to capitalise on the advantage.

They once again squandered the lead to let Qatar snatch the fourth game 25-20 and take the match to the decider.

In the deciding set, the Indians held on to their nerves to make it 15-10.

Gurinder Singh was the top-scorer with 20 points while Govindarajan Ramakrishnan Vaishnav, Naveen Raja Jacob Manidurai and Prabagaran scored 18 points each to help India post a victory on the penultimate day of the competition.

For Qatar, Ribeiro Renan was the highest scorer with 21 points to his credit.