India sends down a loosener

Still,heading into Saturday,the men’s trio run into Japan who they’ve beaten most times,but crucially not the last time when they qualified for the Olympics at Ogden,where the Indians lost out by two points. The scene will still count as bleak,for should they beat Japan,they’re up against a red-hot Korean troika,two of whom managed world records on Friday.

Silver lining

The bright spot of the day – as bright as the bashful sun in overcast conditions – was Deepika Kumari,who single-handedly hauled up India’s placing in the ranking rounds to 9th,finishing 8th individually. She tallied 662,and meets Great Britain’s Amy Oliver in her opening knockout,even as the mercurial Chekrovolu Swuro put in one of her worst performance.

She too was recovering from a flu that she picked someplace on the archers’ Shillong-Kolkata-Delhi itinerary that could do with a critical review,for the future. But India’s poster girl of archery,who went into the Olympics as World No 1 had to dig deeper than what her reputation would suggest to even finish in the Top 10. “It’s not a bad score,she will improve,” said the team manager Paresh Mukherjee.

He minced no words though when saying that the men’s team had no business dishing out this poor performance,though maintaining that the team were capable of beating the Japanese.

The women next meet Denmark,who have finished well above their rankings,if not expectations. But the fact remains that on a day when conditions couldn’t have been better,India disappointed to the extent that it left archery experts wondering what had gone so wrong since they had last been seen in competition. “Maybe they were just taking it easy,” said a Korean official,though a depreciating performance seemed more the explanation than any effort at deception.