India’s brilliance in weightlifting continues as Lalrinnunga and Achinta bags gold: CWG 2022 Day 3 Roundup
The third-day action of Commonwealth Games 2022 took the intensity levels of this game to another level as all big guns have started medal hunting to survive in this battle of supremacy. Team Australia continues to dominate the medal tally with a hefty lead while the hosts England has overthrown New Zealand to cease down the second position.
Meanwhile, the Indian contingent takes a tiny jump and lands in the sixth position with three golds, two silvers, and a solitary bronze medal.
The Indian weightlifters who are carrying the medal-winning responsibilities of the whole Blues contingent once again ended up on the podium and added two more golden laurels to the national tally. Hence ‘Parimatch News‘ brings you detailed reports of the performance of Team India on the Day 3 of the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
Table Tennis
The Indian Men’s Table Tennis side is thriving on the Commonwealth stage and has now entered medal contention. The Blue paddlers faced Bangladesh in the quarter-final clash and whitewashed the neighbourhood side on a final scoreline of 3-0. The game kick-started with Harmeet Desai and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran pairing up against the opposition Doubles duo of Ramhimlian Bawm/ Mohutasin Ahmed Ridoy to hand India a 1-0 lead in the game.
In the following tie, India No. 1 Achanta Sharath Kamal stepped out and showed sheer class to emerge victorious by 11-4, 11-7 and 11-2. Then the starlet Sathiyan Gnanasekaran wrapped up the encounter by winning his Singles bout dominantly and took the nation into the penultimate round. The defending Commonwealth champions will now face the challenge of the 2018 Gold Coast CWG silver medalist Nigerian side on Monday.
Boxing
The Women’s Boxing World Champion Nikhat Zareen has made it to the Last 8 of the lightweight category after delivering a knockout to the Mozambique opponent Helena Ismael Bagao.
Nikhat was on top of her game and played the Round of 16 fixture so ruthlessly that the referee had to call off the match and declare her the winner when 48 seconds were remaining on the clock. She will now have to cruise past the Kiwi boxer Troy Garton who is the reigning Commonwealth Games bronze medalist in the quarterfinal in order to take another step towards a podium finish.
Meanwhile, the Indian starlet boxer Shiva Thapa’s contention in the Men’s 63.5 kg category ended after losing out the Round of 16 battle to Reese Lynch of Scotland on a final scoreline of 1-4. Despite winning the first bout against the Scottish opponent, Thapa failed to carry forward the momentum as the results of the following four bouts went in favour of Lynch.
In other news, Sagar Ahlawat makes it to the Men’s 92 kg Super Heavyweight quarter-finals but Sumit Kundu crashes out after losing to Australia’s Callum Peters by 0-5 in the Men’s 75 kg middleweight category.
Cricket
The shining Smriti!
After losing the opening fixture against the World Champion Australia in hard-fought combat, the Women in Blue quickly bounced back and got their best in the very following game. They faced the arch-rivals Pakistan in their second fixture of the group stages and registered a convincing victory by 8 wickets with six overs left.
Pakistan skipper Bismah Maroof won the toss and confidently elected to bat first but couldn’t post the total of 99 runs on the board before getting all-out on the last ball of the innings. The gameplay was reduced to 18 overs per inning after the rain interruption however the Indian team faced no such obstacles to chase it down.
The star Indian batter Smriti Mandhana starred in the chase scoring an unbeaten 63 runs off 42 balls. While with the ball, the 28-year-old off-spinner Sneh Rana picked two crucial wickets and only gave away 15 runs from four overs with an economy rate of 3.80 per over which was the lowest in the game.
Hockey
The Women’s side has already uplifted the Indian flag in this mega event and now it’s time for the Men’s team to grace the Commonwealth stage. The Tokyo Olympic Games Bronze medalist side kick-started their CWG campaign by registering an emphatic win over Ghana on a historic scoreline of 11-0.
Earlier the India Women crushed the Ghanian side on a five-goal difference without conceding a single one while the Men’s side cruised victorious with a winning difference of more than double.
India broke the deadlock in the third minute of the game through youngster Abhishek’s strike and then went on to score two more before the completion of the first quarter. Then the Men in Blue scored two in the second, four in the third and two more in the final quarter to bring on the total goal tally to 11 at the final whistle.
After this dominating victory, India has issued a warning to the current Pool B toppers England whom they’ll be facing up next to seek revenge for the previous edition’s bronze medal defeat.
Badminton
It seems like there is no stopping for the Indian contingent in the mixed team event as Team Blue has advanced to the semifinal round and is now just a single step away to battle for the gold. India squashed the South African side in the quarterfinal clash on a whitewashing scoreline of 3-0 to comfortably enter into the penultimate stage.
The quarter-final clash commenced with a mixed doubles tie where the pair of B Sumeeth Reddy and Ashwini Ponnappa lined up against Jarred Elliot and Deidre Jordaan and wrapped it up quickly in the first two sets itself.
The 20-year-old Thomas Cup winner Lakshya Sen faced Carden Kakora in the easiest tie for India where the South African challenger could score only 11 points from two sets against the youngster.
Then another youngster named Aakarshi Kashyap stepped onto the battlefield to defeat Johanita Scholtz by 21-11 and 21-16 and won the game for Team India. Singapore, who defeated the Scottish side in the previous round by 3-0 now awaits India in the semis where we will get to see an intense battle between these two giant nations as the ticket to the Grand Finale will be on the line.
Weightlifting
The teenager brings the golden glory!
Team India continues their dominance in the weightlifting sport as the Blues’ six out of six Commonwealth Games medals have been obtained from this sport. This time, it was the 19-year-old weightlifter Jeremy Lalrinnunga who participated in Men’s 67 kg category and consummated the event by fetching the gold medal honour. The teenage Mizo sensation lifted a grand total of 300 kg (140 kg in snatch and 160 kg in clean and jerk) to set a new Commonwealth Games record.
Third-day action started with a gold and also ended with gold as the former Junior World Champion Achinta Sheuli added the sixth laurel to the medal tally of the Indian contingent. The 20-year-old won the gold medal honour after conquesting Men’s 75 kg middleweight category with sheer dominance. The youngster lifted a total of 313 kg consisting of 143 kg snatch and 170 kg clean and jerk to outclass the second-placed Malaysian lifter Erry Hidayat by a whopping margin of 10 kgs.
Squash
Double good news comes from the Squash sport to the Indian contingent that both surviving ace players Joshna Chinappa and Saurav Ghosal have entered into the quarter-final stages of their respective Singles categories. Joshna kicked off the Day 3 Squash action after a throbbing win over Kaitlyn Watts in the Round of 16 ties. She got the better of the New Zealand opponent after winning the game on a 3-1 final scoreline faring 11-9, 9-11, 11-4 and 11-6.
On the other hand, the former World No. 10 Saurav Ghosal also replicated the same feat by winning the Men’s Singles ‘Round of 16’ game by 3-1. Saurav defeated Canada’s David Baillargeon by 11-6, 11-2, 11-6 in straight sets to emerge victorious while conceding only 14 points in the entire gameplay. The veteran Indian will be taking on the Scottish squasher Greg Lobban in the quarterfinal fixture with an aim to break into the penultimate round.
Swimming
India’s biggest hope in aquatic sports, Sajan Prakash has failed to qualify for the final of the Men’s 200m butterfly event after finishing ninth in the overall standings. He clocked 1:58:99s while finishing fourth in his heat but unfortunately couldn’t make it to the Top 8 which qualified for the final round.
However, there’s still an outside chance for the Indian veteran to play in the final event as he has been considered as a reserve and can be chosen as a replacement if anyone withdraws from the final heat.
After failing to make it to the podium despite participating in the final of the Men’s 100m Backstroke event, the 21-year-old youngster Srihari Nataraj is set to make another attempt for the medal in Backstroke but this time with a shorter distance. The Bengaluru Boy will be sweating out in the final battle of the Men’s 50m Backstroke event in search of his first breakthrough at the Commonwealth Games. Nataraj finished fifth by clocking 25.38 seconds to book his place into the final round for the consecutive times in Backstroke events.