Iran’s men’s and women’s wheelchair basketball teams defeated their rivals at the 2019 International Wheelchair Basketball Federation (IWBF) Asia Oceania Championships in Thai city Pattaya on Saturday.

Iran’s men team beat China 64-60 at the Eastern National Sports Centre. Iran’s Morteza Abedi scored a match-high 27 and Lin Yinhai led the Chinese team with 18 points.

Team Melli will meet Japan on Sunday.

Earlier on the day, the Iranian women beat Cambodia 40-22. Roghayyeh Amiri scored 14 points for Iran and Sinet An led the Cambodians with 13 points.

Iran will meet India on Monday.

The IWBF Asia Oceania zone has four spots available for men and three for women at Tokyo 2020, with one spot in each already allocated to Japan as the host nation.

Fourteen men’s teams and an event-record eight women’s teams will compete at the competitions, taking place at the Eastern National Sports Centre and are scheduled to conclude on December 7.

In the men’s competition, the six top-ranked teams – Australia, China, Iran, Japan, South Korea and Thailand – will play in Division A, which will be a single round-robin to determine first to sixth place in the ranking.

The other eight teams – Afghanistan, Chinese Taipei, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Malaysia, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia – are drawn into two pools of four in Division B.

The top two teams in Division B will become the seventh- and eighth-ranked teams in Division A to make up the quarter-final pairings. / T.T/