Khade narrowly misses out on a medal
Virdhawal Khade narrowly missed out on a medal and ended up fourth in the 50m freestyle event just 0.03 seconds behind the eventual bronze-medallist on yet another disappointing day for Indian swimmers at the Asian Games.
The 19-year-old Khade, who qualified with the fifth best timing of 22.98sec, clocked 22.87sec in the finals.
China's Lu Zhiwu clocked 22.37sec to clinch the gold just 0.08 seconds ahead of Japan's Masayuki Kishida, who won silver. Another Japanese, Rammaru Harada finished third with a timing of 22.84.
Had Khade, a national champion in the 50m freestyle, 100m freestyle, 200m freestyle and 400m freestyle events, managed to be inside top-three, he would have become India's first swimming medallist in the Asian Games since Khazan Singh's silver in the 1986 Seoul Asiad.
India bag silver in snooker team event
India won a silver medal in the men's snooker team event at the 2010 Asian Games after losing 1-3 in the final to hosts China at the Town Gymnasium in Guangzhou on Monday.
The trio of Yasin Merchant, Brijesh Damani and Sneh Aditya Mehta failed to live up to the expectations and went down fighting to Junhui Ding, Liang Wenbo and Tian Pengfei 16-70, 51-46, 27-68, 0-96 in the final of team event.
In the first game, veteran Yasin was blanked by Ding 16-70 but Aditya drew parity for India, beating Wenbo 51-46 in the next.
The Chinese went ahead once again as the Indian duo of Yasin and Aditya failed to lift their game at crucial junctures, losing the doubles encounter to Ding and Pengfei 27-68.
Wenbo then thrashed Yasin 96-0 in the fourth rubber to pocket the gold medal in the hosts favour.
Men's snooker team crush Pakistan to enter final
India's good run in cue sports continued for the second day in a row with the men's snooker team assuring itself of at least a silver medal but the fancied shooters came a cropper on the third day of competition at the 16th Asian Games in Guangzhou on Monday.
The snooker trio of veteran Yasin Merchant, Aditya Mehta and Brijesh Damani proved too strong for Pakistan as they demolished their arch rivals 3-0 to set up a gold medal clash against hosts China.
Indian shooters flop
But the strong shooting contingent, which has provided India the bulk of the medals so far, drew a blank at the Aoti shooting range, failing to qualify in all the events.
Star shooters like Gagan Narang and Tejaswini Sawant came up with below-par performances in windy conditions to spoil India's medal chances.
The overcast conditions upset India's hopes for a medal in the men's 50m rifle prone event in the Asian Games as the country's shooting trio, including Gagan Narang, failed to advance to the finals.
Narang, who secured two silver medals in the 10m air rifle event on the opening day including the team honours, was second-best among Indians by finishing a lowly 24th with 587 points.
Hariom Singh was 13th from 54 shooters in the qualification stage by shooting 590 marks but this was way behind the 594-595 he has been doing in the practice rounds. The third Indian entrant Surinder Singh Rathod was 27th with a tally of 586.
Men's hockey team off to a smashing start
The men's hockey team began their campaign on a rousing note by thrashing lowly Hong Kong 7-0 in a group-B league match while the paddlers endured a mixed day in the individual competitions with only Kumarsen Shamini making it to the second round of the mixed as well as women's singles event.
Indian hockey players utilised three out of the five penalty corners they earned in the match with Sandeep (4th and 18th minutes) converting two and Tushar Khandker (37th) scoring from a variation.
Bharat Chikara (2nd), Sarvanjit Singh (22nd), Arjun Halappa (38th) and Shivendra Singh (48th) completed the rout for India through field strikes.
Sasikiran at joint 2nd with two rounds to go
Indian Grandmaster Sasikiran Krishnan continued his unbeaten run with two wins and a draw on Monday to sit at joint second after the seventh round and remain in contention for a medal in the chess competition of the Asian Games in Guangzhou.
Seeded second in the competition, Sasikiran began the day with a draw against Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan before defeating Vietnamese Nguyen Ngoc Truong and So Wesley of Philippines in the sixth and seventh rounds respectively.
Another Indian in the men's section, Surya Sekhar Ganguly won two matches -- against Filippov Anton of Uzbekistan and Moradiabadi Elshan of Iran -- while losing to Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan.
After seven rounds, Sasikiran now sits at joint second on 5.5 points along with top seed Le Quang Liem of Vietnam while Ganguly is at joint fifth on five points. Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan was the sole leader on six points.
Only two rounds are left to played on Tuesday in both men and women categories to decide the individual medalists before the team events commence from November 18 and run till November 26.
Among women, Harika Dronavalli and Tania Sachdev are at joint fourth on five points each after the seventh round.
Harika had a creditable draw with top seed Chinese Grandmaster Hou Yifan in the sixth game after beginning the day with a win over Woman Grandmaster Pourkashiyan Atous of Iran. She then drew with Vietnam's Pham Le Thao Nguye in the seventh round.
Tania began the day with a loss against Pham Le Thao Nguye but scored victories in the next two matches -- against Mongolia's Grandmaster Ans Tuvshintugs and Enkhtuul Altanulzi.
India suffer loss against South Korea in volleyball
India suffered a 0-3 thrashing at the hands of formidable South Korea in their second preliminary round match of the volleyball competition in the Asian Games.
India, who began their campaign with a 3-1 victory over Kazakhstan, lost 19-25, 20-25, 19-25 in a one hour nine minute Group B contest.
For India, Sanjay Banwari produced an impressive display for the second consecutive day today, scoring the maximum 13 points. Park Chul Woo contributed the maximum 20 points for South Korea.
India play their next group match against Vietnam on Tuesday.
India secure bronze in men's team competition
India had to be content with the bronze medal as they went down 1-2 against Chinese Taipei in a marathon men's team tennis championship semi-final rubber at the Aoti courts with top singles player Somdev Devvarman winning his tie comfortably.
Starting the battle in the morning, fourth seeds India stretched their opponents right till 5.45 pm in the evening when the tie ended in the top seed Taipei's favour.
Sanam Singh gave a tough fight to Yang Tsung Hua but failed to convert his chances and went down after winning the opening set. He lost 7-6 (3), 2-6 6-7 in two hours and 44 minutes.
Somdev, ranked 105th in the world, brought India back into the rubber when he demolished Taipei rival Ti Chen 6-2, 7-6 (4) in 1 hour and 39 minutes by out-hitting his rival from the base.
But the efforts seemed to have drained the Indian duo who were blown away in the doubles tie which they lost 6-4, 7-6 (1) to settle for the bronze.
Ashish disappoints in gymnastics
India's Ashish Kumar finished a disappointing 23rd in a 24-participant field in the final of the men's individual all-round artistic gymnastics competition at the 16th Asian Games at Town Gymnasium.
Ashish, who created history last month at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi by bagging India's first medal in gymnastics in a multi-sport event, was nowhere near his best, as he finished with a total score of 64.750, way behind the top three position holders.
China's Haibin Teng and Bo Lu bagged the gold and silver in this event with a score of 91.100 and 89.950 respectively, while bronze medal went to Japan's Hisashi Mizutori (89.700).
Apart from the floor, where he finished joined highest with a score of 14.700, Ashish was nowhere near to his rivals in other routines.
The 19-year-old Indian's routines in pommel horse (10.200), still rings (13.550), parallel bars (14.200), high bar (12.100) and, most importantly, vault (0.00) marred his day.
Incidentally, Ashish scripted history last month when he won a silver and a bronze in vault and floor for India in the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.
Ravi Kumar disappoints, fails to lift a medal
India's medal hope K Ravi Kumar failed to live up to expectations as he finished fifth with a below-par performance in the men's 69kg weightlifting event.
Ravi Kumar would have won a medal had he repeated his 321kg effort which fetched him a gold in the Commonwealth Games but he could only lift 311kg (141+170) to finish fifth.
North Korea's Sok Kim Kum (143+181) and Iran's Rezaeian Morteza (147+177) were tied at 324kg but the former won the gold as he had a lesser body weight. The bronze went to Indonesia's Triyatno with a total lift of 321kg (143+178).
The men's 69kg field was without China's world champion and world record holder Hui Liao who lifted 358kg (160+198) in the World Championships in September. Hui pulled out just a few days before the Games due to a shoulder injury.
Ravi Kumar started on a disappointing note, failing in his first two attempts to lift 140kg in snatch. However, he managed to clear 141kg in his third lift to stay in the hunt, by finishing on fifth at the end of the first category.
In contrast, Rezaeian along with another fellow Iranian lifter Seyed Panzvan topped the snatch event with 147kg lift, followed by Sok Kim Kum and Triyatno with 143kg lift each.
In clean and jerk, Ravi raised Indian hopes with a successful first attempt lift of 170kg but failed in his subsequent two attempts to lift 180kg.
In his last clean and jerk attempt, he almost lifted 180kg but he could not hold on the weight for enough time to be counted as a good lift.
Indian beach volleyball pair lose
The Indian pair of Kasi Viswanadha Raju and Kiran Kumar Reddy lost their opening round match against rivals Kazakhstan in the Beach Volleyball event.
Raju and Reddy lost 1-2 (12-21, 22-20, 15-17) to the duo of Dimitry Yakovlev and Alexey Kuleshov in a 52-minute Pool E contest.
The Indian duo play their next pool match against Malaysian pair of Norrodin Rafi and Chong Long Khoo on Tuesday.
India routed by Kazakhstan in water polo
The Indian women's campaign in the water polo event began on a losing note as they suffered a 2-38 thrashing at the hands of Kazakhstan.
India could score just a goal each in the first and finals sessions of the Group A match which they lost 1-13, 0-14, 0-8, 1-3.
India play their second match against China on Tuesday
Indian wushu player finishes last
India's Sagolsem Somorjit finished a disappointing last in the men's nanquan/nangun all-round nangun wushu competition.
Somorjit finished 15th in a 15-player field with a total score of 7.65.
Huang Guangyuan of China won the gold with a total score of 9.86 while the silver and bronze went to He Jingde (9.74) of Hong Kong and Vietnam's Pham Quoc Khanh (9.68) respectively.
