India added seven medals on Day 9, five of them from a red-hot athletics track, to push the Aichi-Nagoya tally to 37. Squash chipped in two silvers, all six Indian archery teams reached their semifinals, and both the hockey and volleyball teams kept winning.
It was a slow start medal-wise, and there was still no individual gold medal thanks to a couple of close misses, but the late Athletics blitz gave a nice feeling to it.
Squash Hands India Two Silvers
Abhay Singh went down 0-3 (9-11, 5-11, 5-11) to defending champion Eain Yow Ng of Malaysia in the men’s singles final, becoming only the second Indian after Saurav Ghosal to finish runner-up at the Games. It was his first singles medal at the Asiad, having won mixed doubles bronze in Hangzhou.
In the other category, 18-year-old
star Anahat Singh went one better in spirit if not colour, losing a tight decider 11-7 to world No. 5 Sivasangari Subramaniam of Malaysia after trailing 2-0 in games, to claim India’s first-ever women’s singles squash silver.
Five On The Track And Field
Harita Bhadra timed a photo-finish bronze in the women’s 200m, clocking 23.20 to edge Japan’s Abigeirufuka by a hundredth of a second.
Ancy Sojan led the long jump for most of the competition before two big Chinese jumps in the final round pushed her to silver with a best of 6.53m, with Shaili Singh squeezed off the podium.
Tejaswin Shankar closed out his decathlon with a 1500m win to secure bronze on 7934 points, behind China’s Xinghua and Japan’s Yuma, having climbed the standings through the pole vault, javelin and hurdles earlier in the day.
Parul Chaudhary then ran a personal-best 9:08.67 for bronze in the women’s 3000m steeplechase, with Ankita fourth in a PB of her own.
The evening’s last medal went to Sarvesh Kushare, who took silver in the men’s high jump, losing out on gold to Chao-hsuan Fu of Chinese Taipei on countback after both failed to clear 2.28m.
Archery’s Clean Sweep Into The Semifinals
All six Indian archery combinations reached the semifinals. The recurve men’s team of Dhiraj Bommadevara, Sanjay Bhoge and Neeraj Chauhan stunned China 5-1 in the quarterfinals, while the recurve women blanked Chinese Taipei 6-0 after also seeing off Mongolia earlier in the day.
India’s recurve and compound mixed pairs eased past their quarterfinal opponents without dropping a set, and the compound men’s and women’s teams both won tight, low-margin quarterfinals to book their semifinal places. The compound teams now need just one more win to guarantee a medal, and two to reach the gold-medal match.
Hockey, Volleyball And Boxing Keep The Momentum Going
Women’s hockey thrashed Singapore 7-0 in Pool B to continue their dominant run through the group stage, while the men’s volleyball team beat Vietnam 2-0 (25-23, 25-21) in Pool C, with Jerome Vinith top-scoring in both sets.
In boxing, Narender (90kg) and Parveen (65kg) won their quarterfinals to reach the semifinals and guarantee medals, joining Ankush (80kg), meaning India now has three boxers assured of at least bronze.
Near Misses
PV Sindhu’s campaign ended in the women’s singles badminton quarterfinals, losing 21-11, 18-21, 10-21 to Chen Yu Fei despite a bright start. She was not happy with the scheduling.
Dhruv Kapila and Tanisha Crasto fell 21-14, 18-21, 21-18 to China in the mixed doubles quarterfinals, while Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand Pullela lost their women’s doubles quarterfinal to Malaysia, and Unnati Hooda went down in three games to Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi after a spirited fightback.
Boxer Sachin lost his 60kg quarterfinal to Japan’s Shunsuke Kitamoto. Manju Rani finished last in the women’s marathon race walk after repeated knee-flexion penalties, with compatriot Priyanka disqualified earlier in the race. Jai Sud and Vipul Chheda both slipped out of the medal positions in the individual dressage final, won by China’s Jiayi Yu.
Other Results
The women’s 4x100m relay team qualified for the final; Nandhini Kongan was sixth in the 100m hurdles final; Animesh Kujur finished fifth in the 200m final. Vithya Ramraj, Anu Raghavan and Santhosh Kumar Tamilarasan all reached their 400m hurdles finals, and Murali Sreeshankar and David Solomon Patturaj both made the long jump final. Neeru Dhanda and Kynan Chenai topped their trap qualification rounds.
Surfers Sivaraj Babu, Sugar Shanti Gayen and Kamali Prakash all won early heats before exiting in Round 3. India lost their sepak takraw opener to South Korea, and all four kurash competitors were eliminated.
