Best-ever Games tally makes for India’s euphoric Sunday (Intro Night Lead)

NEW DELHI - India enter the second week of the 2010 Commonwealth Games Monday after an euphoric 7-4 hockey victory over Pakistan Sunday and an encouraging 73 medals, the best-ever Games tally, surpassing the 69 at Manchester eight years ago.

On the 7th day of the competitions Sunday, 15 medals — five gold, five silver and five bronze - were won by Indians in archery, shooting, wrestling, athletics and tennis. This was India’s biggest haul on a single day at these Games.

Archery contributed two gold and one each came from the shooting range, wrestling arena and tennis stadium, taking the tally to 29, just one short of the record 30 gold bagged at Manchester.

Deepika Kumari, the 16-year-old archery sensation, set off Sunday’s gold haul by winning in the individual recurve. Rahul Banerjee picked the second archery gold of the day, from the men’s individual recurve event.

Shooter Harpreet Singh, Bejing Olympic bronze medallist in wrestling Sushil Kumar and tennis star Somdev Devvarman brought in a gold each.

The break-up at the end Sunday’s events was 29 gold and 22 silver and bronze each. In the last Games at Melbourne, India returned with 22 gold, 17 silver and 10 bronze, totalling 49.

Australia leads the table with 60 gold, 36 silver and 35 bronze. England is third with 25-45-30.

With four more days to go for the curtains to come down on the Games, the question is whether India would cross the three-figure medals tally and also displace Canada at number three position in the overall Games table. Canada had come third both at 2002 Manchester and 2006 Melbourne Games. Australia was the table topper with England behind them.

India scored an emphatic 7-4 victory over bitter rivals Pakistan and were greeted with thunderous applause from an overflowing Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium. Among the spectators were Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi.

Deepika Kumari, daughter of an auto-rickshaw driver in Ranchi, became India’s first individual gold winner from archery in the Games. She beat Athens Olympics bronze medallist Alison Jane Williamson of England 6-0.

While Rahul Banerjee took the gold in individual recurve event, Jayanta Talukdar and veteran Dola Banerjee and got a bronze each.

With four medals coming their way Sunday, India ended their campaign in archery with a rich haul of eight medals — three gold, one silver and four bronze.

There was no let up in the shooters good showing with Harpreet Singh taking the gold in the men’s 25 metres centre fire pistol event while the silver went to Vijay Kumar after a dramatic four-way shoot-off and former world champion Manavjit Singh Sandhu trapped the bronze.

The fourth gold of the day came from Olympics bronze medallist wrestler Sushil Kumar in the freestyle 66 kg category.

Rising tennis star Somdev Devvarman rounded off the day bagging the gold in the men’s single’s.

Joginder Kumar and Anuj Kumar won the silver in the freestyle 120kg ande 84kg category respectively. Anil Kumar won the bronze in the 55 kg category.

It was an all Indian affair in the women’s tennis doubles for the bronze that saw Sania Mirza and Rushmi Chakravarthi beating Nirupama Sanjeev and Poojashree Venkatesha.

India had their best-ever day in the Commonwealth Games track and field competition Sunday, picking up two silver medals from men’s discus and women’s long jump. Vikas Gowda brought the country its first silver medal of the day and also in the ongoing edition of the Games giving the 40,000 odd Sunday crowd at the majestic Jawaharlal Nehru stadium much to cheer for.

A strained calf muscle prevented women’s long jumper M.A. Prajusha from winning a rare gold in the track and field competition and she had to be content with a silver with a leap of 6.26m in her final attempt.