Devendro in Mongolian tourney final
Commonwealth Games silver-medallist L Devendro Singh (52kg) advanced to the final along with the young Ankush Dahiya (60kg) on another mixed day for Indian boxers at the Ulaanbaatar Cup in Mongolia on Saturday.
Devendro defeated Mongolia’s Gandulam Mungun-Erdene in a unanimous verdict, while Ankush, a former Asian youth silver-medallist, got the better of Russia’s Radna Tsibikov in a split decision. However, three others -K Shyam Kumar (49kg), Mohammed Hussamuddin (56kg) and Priyanka Chaudhary (60kg) -- lost their respective semifinal bouts to settle to bronze medals.
In Sunday’s final bouts, Devendro, putting up his best performance of the year so far, will be up against Indonesia’s Aldoms Suguro. The 25-year-old former Asian silver-medallist has looked sharp in the tournament with improved fitness making quite a difference to his performance.
The 19-year-old Ankush, on the other hand, will fight it out with Korean Man Choe Chol. This is Ankush’s second international tournament since making the transition from youth to elite level late last year.
Shyam Kumar, a gold-medallist from this year’s King’s Cup in Thailand, lost a split verdict to Filipino Rogen Ladon. Hussamuddin was beaten by Mongolia’s Bat-Ochir Tumurkhuyag in his semifinal bout.
Krishnan Sasikiran proved to be the saviour as Indian men were held 2-2 by Turkey while the Indian women suffered a 1-3 loss against Russia in the sixth round of World teams’ chess championships here.
While the Indians dominated the proceedings for the major part of the match the end was good for the Turkish team as they maintained their unbeatable run. Grandmaster B Adhiban ran out of steam as he lost to Yilmaz Mustafa on the second board while Vidit Gujarathi was held to a draw by Solak Dragan on the top board.
Mohamad Batuhan Dastan held Parimarjan Negi on the fourth board and Sasikiran won in a highly complex game against Can Emre.
The draw against Turkey put the Indian men a little off track for a podium finish for which they will need to do really well against Ukraine now in the next round. In the last two matches the Indians have to face Russia and Norway.
In other matches of the day, the Russian men beat Poland by a 3-1 margin while the Chinese scored a 2.5-1.5 victory over Ukraine. Belarus beat Norway by 3.5-0.5 margin and USA humbled Egypt 3-1.
As things stand with three rounds remaining, Russia remained in sole lead on 11 points while the Chinese are a close second on ten points. Poland and Turkey share the third spot on eight points apiece, one more than India that is now on seven points.
Indian shooters won two medals including a gold in the 25m standard pistol event in the junior World Championship at Suhl, Germany.
Anish scored 579, a world record, to win individual gold.
The Indian team comprising of Anish, Anhad Jawanda and Zanan Patil scored 1687 to win silver behind China (1694).
France were third with a total of 1678 points.