Praneeth out of China Open
CHANGZHOU: B Sai Praneeth suffered a three-game loss to world No 9 Anthony Sinisuka Ginting in the quarter-finals to end India’s campaign at the China Open World Tour Super 1000 badminton tournament.
Almost a month after dispatching the Indonesian en route his historic World Championships bronze at Basel, world No 15 Praneeth went down to the same opponent 21-16, 6-21,16-21 in 55 minutes to end his campaign here.
Ginting will now take on eighth seeded Denmark’ s Anders Antonsen, who had clinched the silver at the World Championships.
SATHIYAN IN QUARTERS
YOGYAKARTA (INDONESIA): G Sathiyan on Friday became only the second Indian to reach the men’s singles quarter-finals at the Asian Table Tennis Championships when he defeated An-Ji Song of North Korea here.
Sathiyan, currently the topranked Indian in the world, hardly broke a sweat as he notched up a 11-7, 11-8, 11-6 win in 22 minutes. The other Indian to reach the quarters was Sudhir Phadke at the Asian Championships in Pyongyang in 1976.
HOCKEY SQUAD
NEW DELHI: Forward Lalit Upadhyay and drag-flicker Rupinderpal Singh on Friday returned to the 20-member men’s hockey squad, to be led by Manpreet Singh, for the tour of Belgium from Sept 26 to Oct 3.
Squad: Goalkeepers: PR Sreejesh, Krishan B Pathak; Defenders: Harmanpreet Singh, Surender Kumar, Birendra Lakra, Varun Kumar, Amit Rohidas, Gurinder Singh, Khadangbam Kothajit Singh, Rupinderpal Singh; Midfielders: Manpreet Singh (capt), Hardik Singh, Vivek Sagar Prasad, Nilakanta Sharma; Forwards: Mandeep Singh, SV Sunil; Lalit Kumar Upadhyay, Ramandeep Singh, Simranjeet Singh, Akashdeep Singh.
ARCHANA GETS INVITE
NEW DELHI: National Inter-State Championships 200m gold winner Archana Suseendran was cleared to participate in the World Championships in Doha after the Athletics Federation of India accepted a late invite from IAAF. After a review of the final entries, the world body, IAAF found that some of the qualified athletes would not be able to take part in the Sept 27 to Oct 6 showpiece event and sent out late invites. The deadline for the submission of final entries was on Sept 16 but the the IAAF opened a small window after maximum target of entries was not reached.