Commonwealth Games 2022: Day 1 saw star performances of Indian players in different events

After a spectacular opening ceremony with PV Sindhu and Manpreet Singh carrying the Indian flag in Birmingham on 28th July, the medal hopefuls started their campaign on 29th of July with a host of events lined up throughout the day. Several Indian athletes were in action in various events including lawn bowls, gymnastics, table tennis, cycling, swimming, track and field (triathlon), cricket, squash, hockey, badminton and boxing. Here are the highlights of Day 1 of Birmingham games.

Lawn Bowls

Woman singles player Tania Choudhary and men’s triples team suffered twin losses each on the opening day of lawn bowls events. The Indian men’s team of Chandan Kumar Singh, Navneet Singh and Mridul Borgohain also lost 6-23 to New Zealand in their first game. They then suffered a 12-19 defeat at the hands of Scotland in their second game.

Table Tennis

It was a dynamic show from Sreeja Akula and Reeth Tennison as the Indian pair didn’t give the South African duo any chance to bounce back and secured a win in all the sets. Sreeja Akula produced a dominant show in the singles event too and beat Danisha Patel 3-0.

Done and dusted in Manik Batra’s case as she doesn’t waste much time to earn the victory. She got better with every game and clinched the third set with 11-2.

Sheer domination from Harmeet and Sathiyan in the third game as they won it by 11-4 to beat Barbados 3-0 in the Men’s Doubles competition. Sathiyan won his singles match too while Sharath Kamal cruised to victory against Roman Maxwell of Barbados in straight games.

Manika Batra also stomped Li on her way to a dominant win.

Badminton

India secured a victory in the first game as they wrapped up the opening game with a win, the pair of Sumeeth Reddy and Ashwini Ponappa sealed the game in straight sets. Srikanth Kidambi won his singles event against Pakistan. PV Sindhu too won the game against Pakistan.

India mixed team badminton won against Pakistan.

Hockey

India’s women hockey team won their match against Ghana.

Swimming

Srihari Nataraj earned a place in the men’s 100m backstroke semi-finals with a good qualification time.

Boxing

India’s Shiva Thapa thrashes Suleman Baloch of Pakistan 5 – 0 to win the Men’s Over 60kg-63.5kg event.

Cricket

The Indian women’s team lost the thrilling match to Australia by a small margin.

Squash

All work no play from India’s 14 year old Anahat Singh as she beats Jada Ross in the game. India’s Abhay Singh beat Joe Champan of the British Virgin Islands 11-5, 11-5 in the Men’s Singles Preliminary Round Of 64 .

Earlier, India had finished at an impressive third  position in the medal tally at the CWG 2018 in Gold Coast, winning 26 gold medals, 20 silver and as many bronze. However, India faces a setback this year as Shooting — where India boasted of multiple medal contenders at the events — has not been included in the final roster.

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