NAGOYA/NISSHIN: India's continental dominance in women's cricket remained unchallenged as the side walked away with the country's first gold of the ongoing Asian Games, while the men's badminton team upstaged Japan to make up for the women's team's ouster and a rare off day for shooters at the continental showpiece here on Tuesday.
Harmanpreet Kaur and Co. hammered Sri Lanka by 147 runs to be crowned Games champions for the second successive edition, the triumph also taking India's medal count to seven, adding a much-awaited gold to the tally.
Medals were also confirmed in badminton and wushu, while the men's hockey team recorded another massive win beating Sri Lanka 16-1 in a pool match. The men's badminton team, led by a resilient Lakshya Sen, fought back after some early jitters to outwit Japan and be assured of at least a bronze.
It was a flawless performance from the Indian male badminton team, which was silver-medallist at the last edition, as it rode on victories from Lakshya, the men's doubles combo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, and Ayush Shetty.
Coming into the event after a series of early exits and low on confidence, Lakshya was staring at defeat after losing the opening game and trailing 14-19 in the decider.
However, the 25-year-old from Almora defeated world No.7 and two-time world championships silver-medallist Kodai Naraoka 11-21, 21-5, 21-19 to give India a 1-0 lead.
Satwik and Chirag then registered a 21-18, 24-22 win over former world champions Hoki Takuro and Kobayashi Yugo to extend India's lead to 2-0 before Ayush produced an impressive performance to see off world no. 16 Koki Watanabe 21-10 21-19 to seal the match and a medal for India.
In wushu, Roshibina Devi Naorem assured India of a medal as she entered the semifinals of the women's 60kg category, defeating Chu Man Sin from Macau in the last eight stage.
Roshibina, who has won a silver as well as a bronze medal in the previous two editions of the competition, was declared winner on point difference over her opponent from Macau at the Aichi Prefectural Martial Arts Hall.
Their gritty performance came after the women's team surrendered to the same country with a 1-3 loss.
While World Championships bronze-medallists Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand produced a clinical performance, the singles players faltered as the team bowed out of the quadrennial event with a 1-3 loss in the quarterfinals.
Two-time Olympic-medallist PV Sindhu let slip early advantage to lose 23-21, 18-21, 6-21 to world No.3 Akane Yamaguchi in the opening singles clash.
Unnati Hooda then couldn't find a way to go past 2022 world junior champion and current world no.7 Tomoka Miyazaki, going down 16-21, 18-21.
Treesa and Gayatri, who recently won their maiden bronze at the New Delhi World Championships, kept India alive with a 21-17, 21-16 victory over Yuki Fukushima and Mayu Matsumoto.
However, young shuttler Tanvi Sharma lost 12-21, 10-21 to former world champion Nozomi Okuhara in the third singles as Japan sealed a 3-1 victory.
The boxers too continued an unbeaten run in the competition with Sakshi Chaudhary (51kg) pulling off an upset by out-punching Paris Olympics bronze-medallist Aira Villegas to storm into the pre-quarterfinals.
Jadumani Singh (55kg) also advanced to the last-16 stage with a dominant 5-0 victory over Nepal's Chandra Bahadur Thapa.
Another bright result for India came in gymnastics where Pranati Nayak qualified for the vault finals in the artistic gymnastics event with a seventh-place finish in the qualification.
A three-time bronze medallist in the Asian Gymnastics Championships, Pranati was seventh among 19 gymnasts who made the final of the vault event which will be held on September 24.
In table tennis, there were mixed results for India with the Indian women’s team moved to the quarterfinals of the table tennis competition at the Asian Games with a victory over Thailand, but the Indian men’s team crashed out after a loss to South Korea in the round of 16 here on Tuesday.
At the Sky Hall here, the Indian women’s team edged out Thailand 3-2 but the men’s team was blanked 0-3, which was their second loss at the group stage following the opening match defeat to Iran.
It was a rare bad day in office for the shooters as the pair of Elavenil Valarivan and Parth Mane finished fourth in the 10m air rifle mixed team final after failing to carry the momentum of a strong qualification round performancey.
Valarivan and Mane, having already won a silver in different events, could not pose a challenge to the rest of the field including China, South Korea and Japan.
They trailed the field all through the final before being eliminated with a score of 376.3 after qualifying second behind China.
On the brighter side, India's top skeet shooter Anantjeet Singh Naruka strengthened his chances of making the Asian Games final by producing a superb 96 out of 100 to move into a four-way tie for the lead after four rounds of qualification.
The 28-year-old Olympian and World Cup Final bronze medallist shot 24 and 25 on the opening day before following it up with 23 and 24 on Tuesday to stay firmly among the leaders at the shotgun range. With one more round of 25 targets remaining, Naruka is well placed to make the eight-shooter final and challenge for a medal.
There was nothing much to celebrate in fencing, or karate, in which Chetan Bhatt lost his bronze medal bout in the 84kg category.
The swimmers too failed to make a splash as the men's 4x100m relay team finished last.