Somdev takes centrestage,India win three more medals

Sania Mirza and Vishnu Vardhan had to be content with a silver in mixed doubles while the men’s archery team comprising Rahul Banerjee,Mangal Singh Champia and Jayanta Talukdar bagged a bronze in the team event.

With the addition of three more medals,India’s medal tally climbed to six gold,12 silver and 18 bronze.

The day clearly belonged to Somdev as he pipped Japan’s Tatasuma Ito 6-2 0-6 6-3 in the semifinals to set up the summit-clash with top seed Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan.

Later,he and Sanam Singh combined superbly to win first gold medal for India in the tennis event in this edition of the Games as the sixth seed pair shocked second seed Chinese Gong Maoxin and Li Zhe 6-3 6-7(4) 10-8 in the final.

However,gold eluded Sania yet again as she and Vishnu Vardhan,seeded sixth,lost the mixed doubles final 6-4 1-6 2-10 to second seed Taipei pair of Chan Yung Jan and Yang Tsung Hua.

Somdev and Sanam’s gold medal feat assumes significance as India landed here without star doubles pair of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi,gold medallists of the last edition at Doha in 2006,who opted to play in World Tour Finals in

London. Rohan Bopanna is also missing from the Indian line-up though he had failed to qualify for the World Tour Finals.

Before Somdev,no Indian had managed to enter men’s singles final and India had won only three bronze medals in men’s singles in Asian Games. Leander Paes had won it in 1994 in Hiroshima Games and Mahesh Bhupathi and Prahlad Srinath had won it during 1998 Games in Bangkok.

In the baseline slugfest,that lasted almost two hours,second seed Somdev pocketed the opening set against Ito,ranked 195,with a measure of comfort but was then blown off the court by the fourth seed Ito,who clinched the second 6-0. Things were looking difficult for the Indian world no. 106 when he and his rival traded service breaks in the first four games. Somdev then staged an excellent rally under pressure by saving two break points in the fifth game and eventually tilted the scale in his favour.

The Indian trio of Jayanta Talukdar,Rahul Banerjee and Mangal Singh Champia fought through challenging conditions to clinch the men’s team bronze after beating Chinese Taipei in the Archery competition of the Asian Games.

Like the women,the Indian men defeated Chinese Taipei but with a more comprehensive 220-216 margin as compared to the women’s 218-217 victory in the bronze medal play-off. Incidentally,both men and women lost to world’s top archers from South Korea in the semifinals before clinching the bronze medal.

The Indians scored 28 and 29 for a total of 57 in the first set of six arrows,56 (29 and 27) in the second set and flagged a bit to get 53 (26 and 27) in the third and 54 in the fourth and last set (27 and 27). They shot a total of eight 10s and bulls eyes.

Spearheaded by their number one player and individual bronze medalist Sourav Ghosal,India blanked Japan 3-0 to notch up their second straight preliminary league victory in men’s team squash competition.

India,who had trounced minnows Qatar by an identical score on Sunday in their opening tie,faced little opposition from Japan but expect to face a tough encounter against Malaysia on Tuesday in their concluding league tie after taking on Saudi Arabia in their third match later on Monday in Pool B.

In rugby,despite suffering heavy defeats in all three league matches,the Indian men’s team qualified for the quarter finals as only nine teams are in the fray.

India,who were thrashed 43-5 by Korea in the opening pool B match on Sunday,were drubbed 61-0 by China and -12 by sub-continental rivals Sri Lanka to finish at the bottom of the group.

Yet,they qualified for the quarter finals and will play the winners of pool B at the University Town stadium tomorrow.

The women performed no better,and were steamrolled by Japan 31-0 for their second straight preliminary league defeat after being thumped 50-0 by Kazakhstan.

Indian cyclists continued to cut a sorry figure at the Games with the duo of Sombir and Atul Yadav finishing 27th and 32nd respectively in the men’s Individual Road Race. In the 180km race,comprising nine laps of 20km each,Sombir clocked 4:15:15.42 and managed an average speed of 42.310. Atul was further down after clocking 4:15:59.39 at an average speed of 42.189.

India swamped Bangladesh 34-20 in their opening encounter as women’s kabaddi made its Asian Games debut. Indian women spikers suffered their third successive defeat in the Asian Games,going down 0-3 to Chinese Taipei in their last preliminary Group B match at the Guangwai Gymnasium.