Asian Games: India win gold in women’s cricket, men’s 10m air rifle on Day 2

India defeated Sri Lanka in the 2023 Asian Games women’s cricket final to win gold on debut. AP

Monday turned out to be quite the eventful day for Indian athletes in the 19th Asian Games, with the nation finally adding gold to their medal collection in cricket and shooting.

After winning three silver and two bronze on Sunday, the first official day of competition in Hangzhou, Team India did one better on Monday by winning six medals — two gold and four silver — to take their overall tally to 11.

Asian Games 2023: India’s medal winners in Hangzhou

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The biggest story of the day was the India women’s cricket team winning gold by defeating Sri Lanka in the final at the Zhejiang University of Technology Cricket Field.

India had not participated in any of the cricket events that had taken place in previous editions of the Asian Games — in 2010 and 2014 — and ended up finishing on top of the podium on debut. The Harmanpreet Kaur-led side had won silver in last year’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham after losing against Australia in the gold medal match.

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It wasn’t India’s first medal at this year’s Asian Games though. That feat went to trio of Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, Rudrankksh Patil and Divyansh Singh Panwar who finished first in the men’s 10m Air Rifle team final.

Their cumulative score of 1893.7 not only was the best among the teams competing in Monday’s final at Hangzhou, it also became a new world record.

Tomar would later add an individual bronze in 10m air rifle event to the team gold that he won alongside Patil and Panwar.

The other bronze won in shooting on Monday was won by Adarsh Singh, Anish Bhanwala and Vijayveer Sidhu in the Men’s 25m rapid fire pistol team event.

Indian rowers would win more medals on Monday. Jaswinder Singh, Bheem Singh, Punit Kumar and Ashish won bronze in the Men’s Four event while Satnam Singh, Parminder Singh, Jakar Khan and Sukhmeet Singh had a similar finish in the Men’s Quadruple Sculls event.

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India, additionally, assured themselves of a medal in Wushu after 2018 Asian Games bronze medallist Naorem Roshibina Devi advanced to the semi-finals of the Women’s Sanda 60kg event with a convincing victory over Aiman Karshyga of Kazakhstan.

At the end of competition on Monday, India were sixth on the medal tally. Hosts China were miles ahead of the rest of the nations, taking their tally to 69 — 39 gold, 21 silver and nine bronze.

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South Korea were second with 33 medals (10 gold, 10 silver, 13 bronze) while Japan occupied the third position with 31 medals to their name (5 gold, 14 silver, 12 bronze).