PALEMBANG: The Malaysian men’s bowling team are confident of a podium finish in the Asian Games team event, despite organisers changing it from a team of five to six.
Team captain, Alex Liew said the players were in high spirits after an intensive two weeks training stint at the Coral Crown Bowl, Kuala Terengganu to strike medal at the Jakabaring Bowling Center here.
The initial reason for the east coast training stint was to help the keglers familiarize themselves with the AMF oiling used at the Jakabaring venue, compared to the Brunswick one which is more commonly used.
“Team of six is our main target for the men’s team because the organisers have cut down half of the events this time. We are aiming for that, any medal will do,” said the 42-year-old, who will be making his sixth appearance at the Asiad.
“There is not much difference on the oiling that we trained with in Terengganu, and over here there are just some slight changes. We are expecting a very strong challenge from teams like South Korea, Hong Kong and Thailand, but hopefully we can overcome them,” he told Bernama when met during training.
Alex, who has two gold and two silver medals under his belt, said only minor adjustments were needed to finalise the ball equipment, as the approach in the lane is almost similar when the team visited the venue last month.
“Most of us bring two extra bowling balls to try out, so today we need to take out the extra balls,” he said.
Alex who has seen a lot of changes in the Asian Games competition since his first made his debut at the 1998 Bangkok edition, admitted he has to continuously learn new things as the competition gets tougher.
Besides Alex, the men’s team consists of Rafiq Ismail, Ahmad Muaz Fishol, Timmy Tan, Adrian Ang and Syafiq Ridhwan Abdul Malek.
For the record, the only time Malaysia won gold in the men’s team event was at the 1978 edition in Bangkok, while in the last two editions at Incheon (2014) and Guangzhou (2010), the team returned with silver medals. – BERNAMA