Sports Desk

The women’s junior (U-21) hockey team left Dhaka for Oman on Thursday to take part in the upcoming Women’s Hockey Junior Asia Cup 2024 which will be held on 7–15 December in Muscat.

The women’s junior team, who qualified for this regional age-level competition as the Women’s Junior AHF Cup 2024 runners-up in Singapore in June, have been placed in the five-team Group A. They will play against China, India, Thailand, and Malaysia on 7, 8, 10, and 11 December.

The women’s Junior Asia Cup is also a qualifier from Asian region for the Women’s FIH Hockey Junior World Cup 2025, scheduled to be held in Chile next year. The top five-ranked teams of this Asian event will qualify for the World Cup.

“We have qualified for the Asia Cup, now going to play there (in Oman). The next target is simple, we have to qualify for the World Cup (Women’s FIH Hockey Junior World Cup 2025). And of course, we also dream of being the champions,” Bangladesh captain Orpita Pal told the Daily Sun before leaving Dhaka.

“All of our opponents are stronger than us because they have been playing for a long time. We have teams like India and China in our group. But if we can stop India and China, we will achieve our goal and if we confidently play against them, we can stop them. Definitely, they are far ahead of us in terms of strength and preparation, but there is a saying, you need to be confident to achieve your goal. We have that confidence and If we play with confidence we can stop them; even we can beat them,” she concluded.