Nagoya, Sep 23 The redoubtable Mirabai Chanu added another historic chapter to her storied career with a jinx-breaking silver but India’s campaign looked far from assured in shooting despite a couple of skeet bronze medals on a day of mixed fortunes in the Asian Games here on Wednesday.
Mirabai, who had been in pursuit of an Asiad medal since 2014, finally got one as she totalled 198kg (88kg+111kg) to finish second in the women’s 49kg category. The silver was also India’s first Asian Games weightlifting medal since Karnam Malleswari’s medal of same colour in 1998.
Overall, it rained bronze medals for India on the day with the men’s badminton team, soft tennis player Jay Meena along with the men’s and women’s skeet shooting teams ending up with third-place finishes.
Meena, who has gone medal-less in the past two editions of the Games, was third-time lucky as he became the first Indian to win an Asiad medal in the sport that is played with softer rubber balls and significantly lighter racquets compared to traditional lawn tennis.
But as is the case when she is competing anywhere, the 32-year-old Mirabai, who won an Olympic silver in Tokyo in 2021, commanded the spotlight. With a familiar grin on her face, she made light work of the heavy weightlifting before declaring that her “life is now complete.”
However, there was no such feeling of contentment at the shooting range where the skeet exponents saved the day for India after the more-hyped women pistol shooters — double Olympic-medallist Manu Bhaker, Suruchi Singh and Esha Singh — failed to medal in either the team or individual 10m air pistol events.
Bhaker was the only one to even qualify for the individual finals only to finish fifth overall. The 24-year-old Paris Olympics bronze-winner later broke down as she opened about the emotional toll that the shocking death of her childhood coach Jaspal Rana in June has taken on her.
The men’s and women’s team event bronze medals in skeet ensured that it was not a complete washout at the shooting range.
The women’s team featured Raiza Dhillon, Maheshwari Chauhan and Parinaaz Dhaliwal and they combined for a score of 331 to finish third behind gold medallists China (357) and Kazakhstan (336). Raiza and Parinaaz also qualified for individual finals but could not fetch podium finishes.
In the men’s competition, Anantjeet Singh Naruka (119), veteran Mairaj Ahmad Khan (116) and Bhavtegh Singh Gill (111) snared the men’s team bronze with a total score of 346. Of these, Anantjeet made the individual finals to end up fourth overall.
Later, wushu player Roshibina Devi Naorem placed herself in gold medal contention by entering the finals of women’s 60kg category, defeating Indonesia’s Thania Kusumaningtyas 2-0 at the Aichi Prefectural Martial Arts Hall here.
She will face China’s Xiaoyu Zhang in the summit clash. The 25-year-old Roshibina had won a silver as well as a bronze medal in the previous two editions of the competition.
Badminton stars humbled by China
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Lakshya Sen and Ayush Shetty faltered against their higher-ranked opponents as the Indian men’s team signed off with a bronze medal after going down 1-3 to nemesis China in the semifinals.
India had won the silver medal at the last edition in Hangzhou in 2023, where they had also lost to China in the final.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty were the only Indians to win a match as China once again got the better of India.
World No. 14 Lakshya, who had produced a stirring performance to take India to the semifinals, could not quite bring his A game to the table, going down 16-21, 18-21 to world No. 6 Shi Yu Qi in the first singles as India fell 0-1 behind.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty produced a sensational performance to outwit Paris Olympics silver-medallists and reigning world champions Liang Wei Keng and Wang Chang 21-11, 22-20 in the first doubles to bring India back into the five-match tie.
But Ayush Shetty and the second doubles pair of Hariharan Amsakarunan and MR Arjun could not win their matches.
TT and squash players advance
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The Indian pairings of Harmeet Desai-Yashaswini Ghorpade and Diya Chitale-Manush Shah eased into the table tennis mixed doubles quarterfinals. The world number seven duo of of Chitale and Shah hardly broke a sweat in their 3-0 wins over the combination from Sri Lanka and Maldives.
In the round of 16, Shah and Chitale blanked Moosa Ahmed and Aishath Nazeem 11-0, 11-7, 11-6. They play Hong Kong’s Doo Hoi Kim and Wong Chun Ting in quarterfinals on Thursday. A win would assure them of a medal in the continental event.
In squash, Abhay Singh, Veer Chotrani and Tanvi Khanna entered the round of 16 with comfortable wins in their respective singles matches.
Abhay, seeded second, lost just three points in his opening round men’s singles match against Thailand’s Arkaradet Arkarahirunya. He won 11-1, 11-0, 11-2.
Chotrani defeated Sri Lanka’s Shamil Wakeel 11-8, 11-3, 11-3 in his round of 32 match.
In women’s singles, Tanvi tamed Dami Kim of South Korea 11-5, 11-7, 11-5 in her opening round.
Women’s hockey team marches on
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Drag-flicker Deepika Sehrawat continued her impressive run, scoring a record nine goals in a single match as India thrashed Thailand 20-1 to register their third consecutive victory in Pool B of the women’s hockey competition.
Deepika (2nd, 8th, 9th, 24th, 33rd, 36th, 39th, 51st and 57th minutes) was unstoppable from penalty corners, converting all her nine attempts to script the record haul, while Navneet Kaur (4th, 29th, 35th and 51st) also ran riot in the one-sided contest.
India also continued their dominant run in kabaddi with both the men’s and women’s team registering comprehensive victories over Bangladesh and Iran respectively in their group-stage fixtures.
(PTI News)
