Sourabh Verma pulls out of Senior Nationals
NEW DELHI: Recovering from an ankle injury, defending champion Sourabh Verma has decided to pull out of the Senior National Championships to regain his match fitness for upcoming tournaments.
The 24-year-old, who last participated at the Japan Open Superseries in September, had suffered an ankle injury during training at Hyderabad and decided to skip the Denmark Open and French Open.
“I am not playing at the Nation- als as I am still not in the best shape to play. I had injured my ankle during training after the Japan Open and have started on-court training just this week,” Sourabh, who had won the Senior Nationals in 2011 and 2016, said.
“I had issues in my ankle but it had aggravated during training so I decided to take rest for a couple of weeks.”
Verma, who had clinched the Chinese Taipei Masters and finished runners-up at Bitburger Open last year, will make a comeback at the China Open Superseries Premier, which starts on November 14.
NANJAPPA, MITTAL CLINCH GOLD
GOLDCOAST(AUSTRALIA): India took their gold medal count to five at the Commonwealth Shooting Championships with Prakash Nanjappa and double trap shooter Ankur Mittal clinching top honours in their respective events, here on Friday.
Nanjappa led an Indian cleansweep at the men’s 50m pistol event with World Cup final bronze-medallist Amanpreet Singh winning silver and Jitu Rai fetching his second bronze of the competition. Mittal added more glitter to his best-ever international year with the double trap gold, while Shreyasi Singh bagged a silver in the women’s double trap event to round off yet another successful day for India at the competition. India have so far won 15 medals at the ongoing championships. Making a strong comeback in the eight-man final round, Nanjappa won the coveted gold medal with a score of 222.4.
RUTUJA TO TAKE ON SUDIPTA IN FINAL
AURANGABAD: It will be an all-maharashtra final in the girls’ singles as top-seeded Sudipta Senthilkumar will take on Rutuja Chaphalkar at the MSLTAYonex Sunrise under 14 national tennis tournament. In boys’ singles, top seeded Krishan Hooda of Chandigarh will clash with Assam lad Udit Gogoi in the final.