Indian shooters, archers, wrestlers sparkle (Roundup)

NEW DELHI - Indian shooters yet again fired to glory, archers and women wrestlers joined the party and a gymnast created history with the first ever medal, taking the count to 34 at the Commonwealth Games here Thursday.

India continued to be second in the medal race after Australia after day four of the competition.

The women’s table tennis team made their maiden final at the Games, while in badminton India reached the final of the mixed team event scoring a splendid 3-0 victory over England. However, there was much heartbreak after the men’s hockey side was decimated 2-5 by defending champion Australia.

India bagged bagged two gold and a silver in shooting while women wrestling, making its debut in the Games, fetched the country its first medals - a gold, a silver and a bronze. Archers, too, won their first Games medals, a silver and a bronze.

India’s gold tally shot up to 14 on the fourth day of the competition, besides 11 silver and nine bronze.

Australia remained atop the leaderboard with 32 gold, 19 silver and 18 bronze pieces.

England was third with a 12-23-12 bronze, followed by Canada who had a tally of 11-2-11 bronze.

Indian shooters Vijay Kumar and Gurpreet Singh brought the country its sixth gold from the range by winning the 25-metre rapid fire pistol pairs event with a new Commonwealth Games record here Thursday.

Kumar (587) and Singh (575) shot a cumulative total of 1,162 to win the yellow metal ahead of Malaysia and Australia at the Karni Singh Shooting Range.

The Indians broke the Games record of 1,134 by a huge margin, which was set by Vijay Kumar and Pemba Tamang at the 2006 Melbourne Games.

Indian shooters Omkar Singh and Gurpreet Singh won the gold in the men’s 10-metre air pistol pairs event while Ronjon Sodhi won the silver in the double trap shooting event.

But there was bad news for the hosts in the women’s 50-metre rifle three position as Tejaswani finished ninth. Only the top eight shooters qualified for the finals. Tejaswani’s compatriot Lajja Gauswami, who made it to the final, took the sixth place returning a score of 666.8 (570 in qualifying, 96.8 in final).

Indian women opened their gold account in freestyle wrestling, Geeta winning the 55kg gold, Nirmala Devi the 48 kg silver and Suman Kundu the 63 kg bronze.

The Indian men’s archery team of Ritul Chatterjee, Jignas Chittibomo and Chinna Raju Srither went down to England to settle for the silver in the compound event.

The match went down to the wire with England beating India 231-229 to win their second archery gold of the Games.

Earlier, the trio of Gagandeep Kaur, Jhano Hansdah and Bheigyabati Chanu bagged an unexpected bronze in the women’s compound team event, country’s first archery medal in the Games.

The hosts defeated Malaysia 223-219 in the bronze play-off.

Archery has returned to the Games after 28 years.

Indian weightlifter Sudhir Kumar got the bronze in the 77 kg weight category by lifting altogether 297 kg.

In the tennis court, top-seeded Somdev Devvarman beat sixth ranked Rubin Statham of New Zealand 6-3, 6-4 to advance to the men’s singles semifinal.

Second-seeded Sania Mirza moved into the women’s semifinals, beating eighth-seeded New Zealander Marina Erakovic 6-2, 6-3, but crashed out of the mixed doubles event pairing Leander Paes by going down to Scotland’s Jocelyn Rae and Colin Fleming 5-7, 4-6 in the quarterfinals.

The Indian women’s table tennis team outclassed fancied England to reach their maiden final at the Commonwealth Games and assured themselves of a medal.

The Indians blanked the second seed England 3-0 in what turned out be a one-sided affair at a packed show court.

On the flip side, World champions Australia scored an emphatic 5-2 win over India in a Pool A men’s hockey match at the overflowing Major Dhyan Chand Stadium.

India had no answer to Australia’s superior fitness and slick team work that was more pronounced in the second half when the reigning Commonwealth champions hammered three of their five goals in a 10-minute spell.

The victory, their second in a row, took Australia to six points while India remained on three from their 3-2 win against Malaysia Tuesday.