The Indian contingent closes day 1 with 2 medals in hand and awaiting another from MMA finals. Tomorrow Himanshu Dhillon, Parth Mane and Rudrankksh Patil will be in action in the men’s 10m air rifle individual as well team finals. All eyes will also be on Suchika Tariyal in the 60kg MMA final.
Indian men’s facing Iran in the men’s team Group F faced defeat at 3-0. Harmeet took the match all the way and lost to Alamian 3-2. Both the men’s and women’s teams lock horns with Pakistan in their next match tomorrow.
Manush Shah was blanked 3-0 by Noshard Alamiyan in the first match after which Manav Thakkar lost 3-0 to Benjamin Parages. Harmeet Desai faced Nima Alamiyan, culminating the match at a defeat.
Earlier, In the women’s category, Yashaswini Ghorpade, Srija Akula and Divya Chatale etched past Singapore 3-2, making a tie at the Asian Games, coming back from behind to seal the win. Yashaswini Ghorpade got things going for India, winning the match against Jian Zheng. However, Srija Akula lost a marathon five-setter to Loy.
Later, Shitali Divya Chitale also went down against Tan Zaho, ultimately bringing India down 1-2 and one defeat away from crashing out. Playing in the do-or-die situation, Sreeja, who made a comeback against Zheng Shiyan, made no mistakes and getting the scores to square. Ghorpade needed all five games to get past Loy Ming, coming through 5-11, 11-8, 12-10, 4-11, 11-9 in a match that could have gone either way till the very end.
Both the men’s and women’s teams had earlier opened their campaigns with 3-0 wins over Indonesia. Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and Manush Shah won comfortably, while Manav Thakkar had to work for his, with Indonesia’s Junindra pushing the match to a decider before Thakkar came through 11-9. On day one, the Indian paddlers put on a strong show, setting the tone early for what turned out to be a promising campaign for the contingent at these Games.