Indian sports News- September 17th
September 17, 2019
Bytes: Wrestling World Championships, Boxing World Championships, Pro Kabaddi League, Chess World Cup, China Open, Match fixing law, TNPL Betting, Scotland vs Netherlands T20I, Asian Table Tennis Championship, Artistic Gymnastic World Championship selected team, National Trials of Shooting, ATP Rankings-Sumit Nagal
YoGems makes sure that you won’t miss a thing in the field of sports, so here is a quick recap to all the happenings from the last 24 hours:
Wrestling:
World Championship- Men 130kg Greco-Roman: Naveen was India’s only hope for a medal in the Greco-Roman category. He had managed to get through to the repechage round after Oscar Pino Hinds of Cuba reached the final. He however, lost his first repechage bout against Estonia’s Heiki Nabi 9-0.
Women’s 50kg: Seema struggled find a hold on Mariya Stadnik of Azerbaijan in the opening round of their pre-quarter final bout. That meant that she conceded six points in the first round and a comeback was next to impossible. Her only scoring move came in the last 30 seconds of the match and now will have to hope for a repechage route for a medal.
72kg: India’s Komal Gule is out of contention of the repechage as well after Beste Altug of Turkey goes down in the quarter-final to Zhamila Bakbergenova 11-0.
After the quarter-finals, both Seema (50 kg) and Vinesh Phogat (53 kg) are in with a chance to win a medal and an Olympic berth as the opponents they have lost to have reached the semi-final. Azerbaijan’s Mariya Stadnik will take on China’s Sun Yanan in the 50kg semis while Japan’s Mayu Mukaida will take on Maria Prevolaraki from Greece. Meanwhile, Lalita (55kg) and Komal Gole (72kg) have been knocked out.
Cricket:
Match-fixing Law- The BCCI’s Anti-Corruption Unit chief Ajit Singh Shekhawat on Tuesday suggested a match-fixing law, besides legalisation of betting, to tackle corruption in Indian cricket. Shekhawat, who was the Director General of Police in Rajasthan before taking charge of BCCI’s Anti-corruption Unit in April 2018, gave his suggestions in an interview. This was after 12 cricketers, including national and international, reported corrupt approaches in the last one year, the Tamil Nadu Premier League came under scanner for suspect activity and a woman cricketer reported an approach from a bookie. Last year, the Law Commission of India had expressed the need to make match-fixing a criminal offence, like it is in England and Australia.
TNPL Betting- The Tamil Nadu Premier League has run into troubled waters with a couple of first-class cricketers and coaches coming under the BCCI Anti-Corruption Unit’s scanner for suspected match-fixing. The Tamil Nadu Cricket Association on Monday said it has appointed a committee to look into the matter. Now, police sources say that they discovered information about a possible betting racket while investigating the suicide of former Indian national cricketer and TNPL team owner VB Chandrasekhar. Police were investigating some of VB’s close friends and cricketers in the state following his suicide, said a report in The Times of India.
ScotvsNed T20I- Scotland recorded the third-highest stand in T20 International history as George Munsey and Kyle Coetzer put on 200 in their side’s 58-run win over Netherlands on Monday. The pair ran riot in Dublin with their double-century partnership before Coetzer was caught out for 89. Munsey went on to score an unbeaten 127, while Richie Berrington hit 22 as Scotland finished on 252 for three. Munsey scored at a pace that put him in rarified company. He hit his maiden century off 41 balls. Three men have scored faster T20I centuries, all off 35 balls. He hit 14 sixes. Only Hazratullah Zazai, who clobbered 16 for Afghanistan against Ireland in February has struck more. Scotland face hosts Ireland on Tuesday in both sides’ second match in the six-game series.
Badminton:
China Open- India’s mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa stunned Indonesia’s world no 7 combination of Praveen Jordan and Melati Daeva Oktavianti in the opening round of the China Open badminton tournament in Changzhou on Tuesday. World No 26 Satwik and Ashwini showed grit as they recovered from a mid-game slump to outwit the sixth-seeded Indonesian pair 22-20 17-21 21-17 in a 50-minute match to enter the second round of the USD 1,000,000 World Tour super 1000 tournament. Jordan and Melati have so far reached five finals, including the 2018 India Open, but they wilted under the relentless pressure exerted by the Indian pair.
Chess:
Chess WC- India’s chances of having a participant in the fourth round of the Fide Chess World Cup hang in the balance after both P Harikrishna and Vidit Gujrathi lost their respective third round opening games in Khanty-Mansiysk on Monday. Harikrishna, playing black against lower-ranked Kirill Alekseenko, suffered his first loss of the tournament as the Russian built on the Italian Opening to tighten the noose against the Indian and won in 52 moves. In the other match, Gujrathi tried his best to prolong the inevitable from slightly inferior rook-pawn endgame to go down in 93 moves against Wesley So of USA. The two will now need to win the second game with white pieces to force the third round into a tiebreak.
Table Tennis:
Asian Table Tennis Championships- G Sathiyan upset world number 5 Harimoto Tomokazu to give India some bragging points as they went down 3-1 against Japan in the quarter-finals of the 24th ITTF Asian table tennis championships (Championship Division) in Tokyo on Monday.The 26-year-old did not drop a set in the 11-4, 11-7, 12-10 victory over the 16-year-old Japanese prodigy to provide India the only point. The experienced Achanta Sharath Kamal fought well in his first match against Maharu Yoshimura before going down 11-8, 12-10, 11-5, 14-12 and was later outplayed by Harimoto 11-7, 11-0, 11-0. Earlier, India had defeated Thailand 3-0 to reach the quarterfinals.
Gymnastics:
Artistic Gymnastic World Championship- A six-member Indian team, including Asian Games bronze medallist Ashish Kumar, was picked on Monday for the Artistic Gymnastics World Championship, to be held at Stuttgart, Germany from October 4 to 13. Besides Ashish (Railways), who won bronze at the 2010 Asiad, the Indian men’s team will also have Yogeshwar Singh (SSCB) and Aditya Singh Rana (Railways). Pranati Nayak, who had won a bronze in vault event at the Senior Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Mongolia earlier this year, will lead the Indian women’s team, which also features Pranati Das and Aruna Budda Reddy, who had claimed bronze at 2018 Gymnastics World Cup. Dipa Karmakar, who was the only Indian gymnast at the Rio Olympics, was unable to take part in the trials because of a knee injury on her right leg, according to a report by the Times of India.
Kabaddi:
Pro Kabaddi League- UP Yoddha produced a clinical performance to beat Jaipur Pink Panthers 38-32 in a Pro Kabaddi League match in Pune on Monday. Raiders Surender Gill (7 points), Shrikant Jadhav (9 points) and Rishank Devadiga (8 points) all stepped up for the UP side as they overcame the season one champions to jump to fifth place on the points table. Deepak Hooda secured a Super 10 (13 points including a Super Tackle) for the Pink Panthers but the team’s lack of quality raiders was evident once again as they struggled for inspiration in attack.
Pink Panthers got off to a bright start, with Sushil Gulia giving them three points with a super raid in the second minute. But the Srinivas Reddy-coached side struggled in defence, and a few silly errors allowed the UP raiders to crawl back in the match.
Shooting:
Nationals Trials- Ruchita Rajendra Vinerkar of the Indian Railways won the women’s 10m Air Pistol national shooting trial T6 on Monday at New Delhi’s Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range, getting the better of Tamil Nadu’s Shri Nivetha by a margin of 237.6 to 236.8 in the finals. Shikha Narwal of Haryana finished third with 216.8. Ruchita had earlier grabbed the eighth and final qualifying spot with a score of 570 after the 60-shot qualification round. Shri Nivetha had topped qualification with a score of 582. Other winners in the day included Rajasthan’s Aadhya Tayal who won the junior women’s 10m Air Pistol and Haryana’s Shikha who triumphed in the youth category of the same event.
Tennis:
ATP Rankings- Continuing his good run, India’s Sumit Nagal jumped fifteen places to achieve a career-high ranking of 159 in the latest ATP rankings released on Monday. The 22-year-old from Haryana ended runners up in the Banja Luka ATP Challenger following a first round appearance at the US Open last month. He had leapfrogged 16 places after his first-round exit in the US Open, where he took a set off Swiss maestro Roger Federer before losing the match. Meanwhile, Prajnesh Gunneswaran continued his run in the top-100. He rose three places to be world No 82. Ramkumar Ramanathan slipped three spots to be 179th, rounding up the top-three Indians in the men’s singles. In doubles, Rohan Bopanna and Divij Sharan maintained their 43rd and 49th position, while veteran Leander Paes moved one spot to be placed 78. In the WTA rankings, Ankita Raina continues to be India’s top-ranked player at 191 and is followed by Pranjala Yadlapalli, who is placed at 338.
Boxing:
Boxing World Championships- Commonwealth Games silver-medallist Satish Kumar (+91kg) and Duryodhan Singh Negi (69kg) paid for sluggish starts as India endured a winless outing in the World Men’s Boxing Championships in Yekaterinburg on Monday. India’s Duryodhan Singh Negi (69kg) lost to Jordan’s Zeyad Eashash in the second round while former Asian Games bronze-winner Satish Kumar went down 0-5 to Richard Torrez of the USA to bow out of the Championships. Negi, competing in his first World Championships, lost 1-4 to the sixth seed. The first round belonged to Eashash as he managed to pierce Negi’s defences with lusty right straights. The standout feature of Eashash’s game was the power behind his punches. In a slow-paced contest, both the boxers were guilty of holding and clinching too often. Torrez, however, managed to be the aggressor and caught Satish off-guard with his straight hits.
