India men’s 3×3 basketball team kickstarted their campaign with two comfortable wins over Macau and Maldives respectively while the women’s team took a dominating 21-1 victory over Northern Mariana Islands at the FIBA 3×3 Asia Cup Qualifying round in Singapore on Wednesday.

The men’s team started the day with a 21-10 win over the Maldives after Pranav Prince’s top-class performance who scored eight points and a clinical Sahaij Sekhon who clinched seven points. The Maldives started positively and scored four two-pointers to start with, but then Sekhon with his swift movement turned the tables.

They followed up the same momentum in the second game and claimed their back-to-back victory ( 21-13) against Macau.

This match was going very closely till the halfway point as both teams kept on scoring one-pointers but then Princepal Singh used his height and physique against shorter Macau players to win a few quick points.

He scored the most number of points (8) in the match, then Sekhon scored the first two-pointer of the tournament for the Indian team to extend the lead to 17-9 and then eventually won the match.

India is currently in the second position in the qualifying group D behind Malaysia who also had two wins but with a better margin on the first day. Both the teams will play against each other tomorrow in a virtual knockout match as the winner will progress to the main draw.

The women’s 3×3 team had a much easier (21-1) first-group match against debutant Northern Mariana Islands to kickstart their campaign. They will play their next two matches against Hong Kong and Indonesia tomorrow.