Mirabai Chanu wins Gold, Sanket Sargar bags silver, and Gururaja Poojary claims bronze: CWG 2022 Day 2 Roundup
The high-profile caravan of the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games moves to the second day of action. As the participant nations have started fetching laurels to have an early edge in the medal tally. The second day of the commonwealth nations’ sporting carnival brought many eventful moments where the bravehearts took their respective nations to glory and made their countrymen proud.
To the joy of Indians, the Indian contingent also joined the medal party as we saw multiple players from the nation having a podium finish. Hence ‘Parimatch News‘ brings you detailed reports of the performance of Team India on the Day 2 of the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Table Tennis
India’s Men and Women, both sides kicked off the second-day action of the Table Tennis event with victories early in the day to enter into the quarter-final round. India Women’s team squashed the Guyanese side by 3-0 starring the experienced Indian paddler Manika Batra who only conceded seven points throughout the three bouts.
Meanwhile, the Indian Men’s Team faced a challenge from Northern Ireland but still managed to emerge victorious by 3-0 and topped their group with three out of three wins Harmeet Desai, Achanta Sharath Kamal and Sanil Shetty from the Blues camp staged the triumph.
India Women played their quarter-final fixture on the same day where they were knocked by the Malaysian side on a thrilling scoreline of 2-3 in favour of Malaysia. Despite losing the opening Doubles tie, India bounced back quickly in the game as Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula won the following two ties and brought the Blues ahead by 3-1 in the games.
India was just a single tie away from winning the match however, the Malaysian paddlers stood tall by winning the remaining two ties to earn the ticket to the semifinal round.
Hockey
The Hockey queens of India continued their winning run in the group stages after defeating Wales on a final scoreline of 3-1 in favour of Women in Blue. The two combatants faced each other in group stages of the 2018 Gold Coast CWG too where Wales’ only win came against India which finished the competition in the fourth position. And the Indian team avenged their previous defeat with a convincing victory over the British side.
The veteran forward Vandana Katariya bagged a brace while the drag-flick specialist Gurjit Kaur scored her third goal of the tournament. Now the Indian Tigress will be up against the hosting nation England with whom they lost the bronze medal match in the previous edition. The Tokyo Olympic games bronze medalist Indian Men’s team will be kick-starting their campaign by facing the Ghanaian side tomorrow.
Badminton
The Indian baddies are rocking!
The second day of Badminton action for India kick-started with a bang as the Indian shuttlers totally outclassed the Sri Lankan side in Group A fixture in a Mixed Team event. They displayed a dominant performance by whitewashing the neighbours on a final scoreline of 5-0 in favour of Team India.
Lakshya Sen in Men’s Singles, Aakarshi Kashyap in Women’s Singles, Chirag Shetty & B Sumeeth Reddy in Men’s Doubles, Gayathri Gopichand & Treesa Jolly in Women’s Doubles and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy & Ashwini Ponnappa in Mixed Doubles were the participants and winners from Team India.
The Indian shuttlers continued the momentum in the second game of the day too and crushed the familiar foes Australia by 4-1 in their final fixture of the group stages. The Indian Singles stars PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth who did not participate in the earlier fixture returned to the field and owned the Aussies. India will now be heading to the quarter-final round with an unbeaten record in the group stage and will compromise with nothing less than a podium finish.
Boxing
The previous Commonwealth Games edition’s Bronze medalist Mohammad Hussamuddin won the first round of the Men’s 57 kg category. Hussamuddin cruised victorious against the South African boxer Amzolele Dyeyi and began his second commonwealth medal quest with a 5-0 triumph. The reigning Asian champion Sanjeet bowed out of the Men’s 92 kg heavyweight category after losing the Round of 16 battle to Ato Plodzicki-Faoagali of Samoa.
The star Indian boxer Lovlina Borgohain stepped out on the Commonwealth Games for the first time as she was making her debut on this stage. She advanced to the next round by defeating the New Zealand opponent Araine Nicholson by 5-0 in a ‘Round of 16’ encounter of the light middleweight category. The Tokyo Olympic games Bronze medalist will now be facing the Gold Coast CWG silver medallist Rosie Eccles of Wales in the quarter-final stages.
Squash
Saurav Ghosal has entered into the Round of 16 in Men’s Singles event after registering a convincing 3-0 victory over neighbouring rival Shamil Wakeel from Sri Lanka. In an unfortunate event, Ramit Tandon gave the Jamaican opponent Christopher Binnie a walkover win after India No.2 made himself unavailable due to back pain.
In the Women’s Singles category, Joshna Chinappa has advanced to the ‘pre quarter-final’ stages after a hard-fought victory over Barbadian Meagan Best on scores of 11-8, 11-9 and 12-10. Meanwhile, Sunayna Sara Kuruvilla’s Singles campaign got finished as she couldn’t survive against the Malaysian opponent Aifa Azman and lost the Round of 32 battle by 0-3.
Weightlifting
The Silver-boy Sanket Sargar opened India’s account at the CWG 2022
The Indian contingent’s performance in Weightlifting was their highlight of the day as India’s all three medals from Day 2 came from this game. It started with the 21-year-old youngster Sanket Mahadev Sargar bagging a silver medal in the Men’s 55 kg category. Sanket lifted a total of 248 kg weight in the category and lost the gold medal honour to Malaysian weightlifter Mohamad Aniq by just a single kilogram difference.
When the whole was celebrating the triumph of Sanket Sargar, the Karnataka stalwart Gururaja Poojary joined the celebrations by winning the Bronze medal in Men’s 61 kg category. Gururaja lifted 118 kg in snatch and 151 kg in clean and jerk to make it a total of 269 kg and finished third after Malaysian Aznil Bidin and Papua New Guinean Morea Baru.
Then the 2020 Tokyo Olympic silver medalist Saikhom Mirabai Chanu took the field and went on to win the first Gold medal for India at the Commonwealth Games 2022. Mirabai performed according to her reputation and dominated the 49 kg weightlifting category by lifting a total of 201 kg including a CWG record of 88kg in snatch and 113 kg in clean and jerk. It is the second time that Mirabai Chanu has graced the gold medal podium of the Commonwealth Games and gave a great start to India’s gold quest.
Swimming
The 21-year-old Bengaluru boy Srihari Nataraj who caught the eyes of the whole country after qualifying for the final of Men’s 100m back stroke missed out on glory. Nataraj finished seventh among eight participants after clocking 54.31 seconds in the final event. Another Indian representative Kushagra Rawat who participated in Men’s 200m freestyle event unfortunately couldn’t go beyond the heats round.