India had a pretty good opening day of competition at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games on Friday. While India’s women’s mixed hockey and badminton teams won convincing 5-0 wins in their first games, the women’s cricketers suffered a narrow defeat.
Renuka Thakur’s devastating spell of 4/18 was in vain as Ashleigh Gardner’s 52 paces helped Australia beat India by three wickets in their opening Group A match of the women’s T20 event. After skipper Harmanpreet Kaur slammed 52 balls from 34 and fly-half Shafali Verma participated with a 33-ball 48, Renuka’s magnificent opening flurry knocked out the top four Australians and with Deepti Sharma (2-26) knocking out Rachael Haynes, Australia were in big trouble. at 49-5. But Gardner stitched up stands of 51 with Grace Harris (37 from 20 balls) and 47 with Alana King (18 not out) to go unbeaten for a 35 ball 52, reaching nine limits under pressure to carry Australia to a resounding victory on the return of cricket in the multi-sport event. They were also helped by the fact that apart from Renuka and Deepti, the rest of the Indian bowling attack had a day off.
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Things were much easier for the Indian badminton team in the mixed team competition as they dispatched heavyweights, two-time Olympic medalist PV. Sindhu and world championship silver medalist Kidambi Srikanth plus the pair of doubles aces of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty as India shut out Pakistan 5-0 in their pool opener of the preliminary round.
The mixed doubles pair of B Sumeeth Reddy and Ashwini Ponappa got the ball rolling for India by beating Pakistan’s Mohammad Irfan Saeed Bhatti and Ghazala Siddique 21-8, 21-12 in consecutive matches.
Srikanth then took to the court at NEC Hall No 5 to get the better of Murad Ali, playing in his second consecutive Commonwealth Games, a 21-7, 21-12 loss. World number 7 PV Sindhu then sealed India’s victory by beating Mahoor Shahzad 21-7, 216 in quick double time.
As India won an unassailable 3-0 draw, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Chirag Shetty’s men’s doubles pair and Treesa Jolly-Gayatri Gopichand’s women’s doubles pair also recorded convincing wins to help India to take maximum points from the tie, whitewash their opponents.
The Indian women’s table tennis team has also started their defense of the title he won four years ago in Gold Coast beating South Africa and Fiji by identical 3-0 margins with Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula leading in their Group preliminary round matches 2. In the men’s team event, Achinta Sharath Kamal and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran led India to comfortable 3-0 wins over Barbados and mighty Singapore in their opening matches. Bo teams have booked their place in the quarter-finals.
The women’s hockey team too won his match against minnows Ghana, he missed a number of chances and could only manage a 5-0 win as Gurjit Kaur scored a brace while Neha, Sangita Kumari and Salima Tete scored one apiece.
Swimmer Srihari Nataraj clocked 54.68 seconds to qualify for the semi-finals in the men’s 100m backstroke, however, experienced Sajan Prakash and rookie Kushagra Rawat failed to advance to the semi-finals of their events respectively.
Shiva Thapa started his Commonwealth Games campaign on a rousing note by beating Pakistani Suleman Baloch 5-0 by unanimous decision in the first round of the 63.5 kg category.
Au squashIndia’s youngest member of the contingent Anahat Singh beats Jada Ross of St. Vincent and the Grenadines 11-5, 11-2 11-0 in the women’s squash singles, preliminary round of 64. In the men’s singles event , Abhay Singh made short work of Joe Champan of the British Virgin Islands, winning 11-5, 11-5, 11-5.
By bikethe Indian men’s and women’s sprint teams as well as the Indian men’s 4000m pursuit team failed to qualify for the Commonwealth Games final.
Pragnya Mohan finished 26th with a time of 1:07:27 while Sanjana Sunil Joshi finished 28th with a time of 1:09:00 in the women’s individual (sprint distance).
In the lawn bowlingIndia’s Tania Choudhury lost her first round of Section B of the women’s singles event to Scotland’s Dee Hoggan 10-21 as India’s men’s triples unit lost 21-6 to New Zealand in of the first round of the men’s triple lawn bowling event.
In artistic gymnastics, India finished the third subdivision with a total score of 108.9. Yogeshwar Singh scored 11.3 in his floor exercise routine, 11.2 on pommel horse, 11.950 on rings, 13 on vault, 13.450 on parallel bars and 12.7 on high bar. Syed Tamboli added another 14.05 points with his performance on the parallel bars while Satyajit Mondal managed to pick up 7.85 with his floor exercise and 13.4 on the vault.
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