Sports Desk: The curtain of the 13th South Asian Games will officially rise today with a grand opening ceremony at the Dasarath Rangasal Stadium in Kathmandu, Nepal.

The festivities will begin at 5.15 pm Bangladesh Standard Time where around 15,000 Nepalese artists will perform in a three and a half hours programme to illustrate their country’s history and culture.

Nepal president Bidya Devi Bhandari will officially inaugurate the region’s biggest multi-sport carnival.

The biennial event, which was originally scheduled to begin on March, 2018 with eight South Asian nations taking part in it, will be played among seven nations with Afghanistan pulling out from the event.

A total of 26 disciplines will feature in this year’s event, which is one less than the originally planned list with the organisers omitting the newly brought paragliding discipline from the list on November 24.

Fencing and golf will feature in the SA Games for the very first time in this edition while basketball and cricket will be returning to the Games after its omission from the 2016 SA Games in Guwahati, India.

From Bangladesh a total of 462 athletes, 263 male and 199 female, will be participating in 25 disciplines out of the available 26 disciplines in this year’s games with triathlon being the only discipline without a Bangladeshi athlete.

This year’s Games will be held in Kathmandu and Pokhara, where around 5,000 athletes from Bangladesh, India, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will vie for a total of 316 gold medals.

In the last edition in 2016, Bangladesh finished as fifth among eight nations with 75 medals, four gold, 15 silver and 56 bronze medals.

Swimmer Mahfuza Khatun Shila, who will bear the Bangladesh flag in the opening ceremony despite not being in the swimming team, won two gold medals in 2016 while weightlifter Mabia Akhter Simanta and shooter Shakil Ahmed claimed the remaining two gold medals for Bangladesh.

Bangladesh can expect more success in this edition as India are not participating in 10 disciplines including archery, men’s cricket and men’s football and Afghanistan, who finished fourth in the medals list in India, will not be participating in Nepal.

The 10-day long regional event, however, had begun before its formal inauguration on November 27 with the men’s and women’s volleyball event in Kathmandu.

On the opening day of the Games, Bangladesh men’s volleyball team will play the second semi-final against Group B champions Pakistan at 1:30pm at the Covered Hall in Kathmandu.

Bangladesh, earlier, confirmed their semi-final final berth as Group A runners-up after India beat hosts Nepal by 3-0 sets in the group’s final match on Friday.

Bangladesh started with a 3-2 sets win against Nepal in their opening match before losing to India by 0-3 sets in Kathmandu.

Bangladesh women’s volleyball team have already finished its campaign after losing both their games against Nepal and India by straight 0-3 sets in their three-team group.

Besides men’s volleyball, Bangladesh will compete in swimming, badminton, basketball, karate and kho kho on the opening day.

The sports disciplines are: archery, athletics, badminton, basketball, boxing, cricket, cycling, fencing, football, golf, handball, judo, kabaddi, karate, kho-kho, shooting, squash, swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon, volleyball, weightlifting, wrestling and wushu.