Nagoya, Sep 24 Skeet shooters once again rescued a faltering campaign at the ranges, the beleaguered rowers signed off with a face-saving bronze while wushu player Roshibina Devi collected her second successive silver to silence the naysayers on an eventful day for India at the Asian Games here on Thursday.
India’s campaign across sports has been far from convincing so far in the continental showpiece. The medal count has increased to 15 but features only one gold that came through the women’s cricket team.
The biggest letdown by a considerable margin have been the shooters and Thursday’s script was no different. After women’s air pistol squad drew a blank the previous day, the men too came a cropper as they finished fourth in the team event with neither of the three making the individual finals.
It could well have been a barren day but for the mixed team skeet bronze by Parinaaz Dhaliwal and Anantjeet Singh Naruka, both of whom have also claimed bronze medals in the respective women’s and men’s team competitions earlier.
The embattled rowers, who have been complaining about last-minute changes to combinations and threats from the Rowing Federation of India, finally had something to show for with Satnam Singh and Salman Khan combining to win the men’s double sculls bronze.
The Indian pair stayed in second place until the 1,500m mark before slipping to third in the final 500m, clocking 6:13.25 at the Nagaragawa International Regatta Course to finish 3.88 seconds behind gold-medallists China.
“We only came together in the men’s double sculls five days ago. I feel proud that, after only five days together, we have managed to win an Asian Games medal in this event,” said Satnam.
Roshibina, meanwhile, became India’s most successful wushu player in Asian Games history with her second successive silver and overall third successive medal at the quadrennial showpiece. She lost to Zhang Xiaoyu of China in the women’s 60kg final.
Roshibina had actually lost the trials for the event and was not in the team for this edition but injury to original choice Divyanshi Choudhary opened the window of opportunity for her.
She made full use of it despite the negativity of Divyanshi’s allegations that the federation played favourites and sabotaged her to include Roshibina.
“It’s all right if somebody wants to be negative to me. In every situation you have to be strong and ignore the negative environment and just trust yourself and believe in yourself and bring your best energy,” the gritty fighter from Manipur said.
The Kabaddi march
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Both the men’s and women’s kabaddi team continued an unbeaten run to remain on course for a successful defence of their respective gold medals. While the men outplayed Chinese Taipei 37-21, the women got the better of Japan 50-25 to enter the semifinals and be assured of bronze medals.
But they are expected to advance further and finish on top in the competition that India has dominated since its introduction.
India also enjoyed a productive day on the squash courts with Anahat Singh, Tanvi Khanna, Abhay Singh and Veer Chotrani advancing to the singles quarterfinals, and Joshna Chinappa and Velavan Senthilkumar making the mixed doubles last-eight.
Junior world champion and medal favourite Anahat began her women’s singles campaign with a 3-0 (11-4, 11-5, 11-7) win over Singapore’s Wai Iynn Au Yeong in just 19 minutes.
Tanvi then joined her 18-year-old compatriot in the quarterfinals after beating Singapore’s Wai Yhann Au Yeong 3-1 (5-11, 11-4, 11-5, 13-11) in 39 minutes.
The results set up an all-Indian women’s singles quarterfinal between Anahat and Tanvi.
Unlike last edition, semifinalists are not assured of a guaranteed medal in the squash singles competition.
In men’s singles, Abhay Singh produced a commanding display to beat Sri Lanka’s Ravindu Laksiri 3-0 (11-5, 11-6, 11-0) in 25 minutes. Veer survived a scare, overcoming Malaysia’s Sanjay Jeeva to prevail 3-2 (11-9, 8-11, 11-6, 15-17, 11-6) in a one-hour nine-minute battle.
This was after Joshna and Velavan advanced beating fellow Indians Suraj Chand and Shameena Riaz in straight games.
There were some facile wins in the table tennis competition as well with women’s doubles pairs of Sreeja Akula-Syndrela Das and Yashaswini Ghorpade-Diya Chitale advancing to the pre-quarterfinals.
Manush Shah and Manav Thakkar also progressed to the last 32 in men’s singles.
Hockey team fires again
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In-form striker Dilpreet Singh slammed home a hat-trick to hand the Indian men’s hockey team a comfortable 8-2 win over Korea and all but assure its place in the semifinal.
It was India’s third consecutive win, keeping them at the top of pool A. India had earlier thrashed Indonesia 13-1 and Sri Lanka 16-1 in their opening two pool matches.
Dilpreet (10th, 26th, 32nd minutes) continued his impressive form and scored three fine field goals, while Abhishek (15th, 38th) struck a brace.
Shilanand Lakra (4th), skipper Harmanpreet Singh (11th) and Rajinder Singh (60th) were the other goal getters for India.
Disappointment in boxing, gymnastics
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Parveen was the lone Indian boxer to progress on the day after she got a walkover into the quarters of the women’s 65kg category. But it was curtains for compatriots Sakshi Chaudhary (51kg) and Sumit (70kg).
Parveen, who had served a WADA suspension for whereabouts failure, had lost in the quarterfinal stage at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games last month.
Earlier, Sakshi bowed out following a 2-3 pre-quarterfinal loss to Kazakhstan’s Alua Balkibekova in the women’s 51kg category. Sumit, however, was forced to withdraw mid-fight due to a knee injury.
The gymnastic campaign came to an end with lone Indian in fray, Pranati Nayak, finishing sixth in eight-women vault final in Artistic gymnastics.
The 31-year-old scored identical 12.900 on her first and second vault to aggregate 13.100 with a 0.20 bonus added to her total.
The Indian, who had recovered from a leg injury to make it to the Games, fetched a difficulty score of 4.4 and execution score of 8.500 in both her vaults.
The fencers did not fair any better as C A Bhavani Devi and Shreya Gupta were eliminated in the women’s individual sabre event. Bhavani, India’s first fencer to compete at the Olympics, advanced to the round of 16 after defeating Mongolia’s Oulen Tugsjargan 15-8 in the round of 32.
However, the 32-year-old Indian ran into a tough opponent in China’s Rao Xueyi and went down 5-15 in the pre-quarterfinals.
(PTI News)
