Tennis players, paddlers strike gold

Indians won gold in women’s singles, men’s doubles and mixed doubles to completely dominate the event at the All Assam Tennis Association Grounds here. 

All the final matches were all-Indian affairs, showing the complete domination by the home players. India also went past the Dhaka tally of 90 gold medals reaching 98 gold on Wednesday. 

In the men’s doubles, Ramkumar Ramanathan and Vijay Prasanth defeated Divij Sharan and Sanam Singh 6-3, 6-4 to give the country the first gold and silver of the day.

Ankita Rana then won the second gold for Indian in women’s singles in another all-Indian final. Raina easily beat Prerna Bhambri 6-1, 6-0 in the final. 

Ankita then paired up with Divij Sharan to win gold in mixed doubles after beating another Indian combine of Sanam Singh and Prarthana Thombre 6-2 7-6(3) in the final.

Later, Indian paddlers captured all the gold and silver medals on offer including in the team event to end with five gold and four silver medals. All other teams— Afghanistan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka—in fray from the region finished behind hosts, with Sri Lanka taking the second spot on the medals tally. 

The men’s singles gold went to national champion Anthony Amalraj as his opponent G. Sathiyan conceded the match in the fourth game owing to an injury. Until that stage, Sathiyan was leading 2-1 and when it was 2-2 in the fourth game, Sathiyan pulled out as he was unable to continue further in the match. 

But Sathiyan and Devesh Karia earlier beat the top-pair of Amalraj and Sanil Shetty in straight games of 11-1, 11-8, 11-6 to win the men’s double gold. Indian women beat Pakistan in the squash final for another gold in the discipline. The team consisted of Joshna Chinnappa, Dipika Pallikal and Soumya Kuruvilla.