Bandung hosts all-star basketball match

Musthofid, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

After completing two of the planned four series, the national premier basketball competition (Kobatama) will now shift to an All-star game.

The game which will be held in Bandung, West Java, on Sunday and pit stars from the five teams grouped in the West division and the other five from the East division.

The players have been included in the teams as fans' choices from a poll. The fans, who were allowed to include up to ten names, sent their choices through either postcards or the website.

"We also held a poll during the second series in Solo (Surakarta)," Doedie Gambiro, chief of the Indonesian Basketball Association (Perbasi) in charge of competition affairs, told a press conference here on Tuesday.

The Surakarta leg was concluded over the weekend.

Doedie said that they had managed to net almost ten thousands respondents in the poll since the commencement of the league last month.

Jakarta-based Aspac Texmaco, the defending champion and frontrunner in the West division, has made up the majority of the starting team with three players.

They are AF Rinaldi, Ricko Hantono and Rommy Chandra. The other two on the team are Dwui Eriano and Cokorda Raka, both from Satria Muda.

From the East division, current leader Bhinneka Sritex of Surakarta has two players for Sunday's game: Pek King Dhay and I Made Sudiadnyana. Panasia Indosyntec of Bandung will send two in M. Bayu Radityo and Antonius Joko, while the other team member is Indrajaya from Wismilak CLS Surabaya.

Another five players have also been picked for the second team for each squad.

The West division's team will be coached by Tjetjep Firmansyah of Aspac with Simon Pasaribu of Satria Muda being the team's manager, while the East division will be led by Bhinneka duo of coach Zhang Da Wei and team manager Halim Sugiarto.

The match will be held at the C-Tra Arena Sports Hall, on Sunday at 3:30 p.m.

"This is a form of our appreciation to the fans and players. We also aim to push forward with our campaign to popularize the sport among people," Doedie said.

The organizers provided match fees of to Rp 1 million for each of the players as well as the cash prizes for the player who wins the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award.

The basketball league will resume competition the following week with the third series in Jakarta and the fourth series in Malang, East Java, in September.

The semifinals are scheduled for October with the finals to be decided later.