World Tour Finals: Sindhu handed a tough draw

GUANGZHOU: Olympic silver-medallist shuttler PV Sindhu has been handed a tough draw in women’s singles but debutant Sameer Verma will fancy his chances of making it to the men’s singles knockout stage at the BWF World Tour Finals starting here Wednesday.

Sindhu will have a tough task at hand as she has been clubbed with defending champion Akane Yamaguchi of Japan, world No 1 Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei and United States’ Beiwen Zhang in Group A. Sameer has been clubbed alongside Japanese world No 1 Kento Momota, Indonesia’s Tommy Sugiarto and Thailand’s Kantaphon Wangcharoen.

AGA KHAN HOCKEY

NEW DELHI: Steel Authority of India’s Hockey Academy beat Army XI Danapur 2-1 to clinch the 115th All India Aga Khan Gold Cup hockey tournament. Jay Prakash Patel scored the matchwinning goal for the SAIL Academy.

POLICE ATHLETICS

NEW DELHI : Akashdeep Singh of Punjab Police and K Ranga of Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) emerged fastest runners in men’s and women’s sections, respectively in the All India Police Athletics Championship here. Akashdeep clocked 10.56 secs Ranja clocked 11.42. Gagan Yadav won gold in men’s hammer throw. In women’s 10,000m, four runners broke the meet record of 36:27.41 sec set by C Chanu of CRPF in 2013. However, the day’s honours went to Meenu Kumari of Rajasthan Police who clocked 35: 11.25. Ranjit Singh (triple jump) and Jasdeep Singh (shot put) added two more gold to Punjab Police’s kitty while Anita of CRPF won the women’s hammer throw.

NATIONAL MEET

NEWDELHI:ARJUNA awardee Ankur Dhama is among 600 visually impaired athletes participating in the three-day 21st National Athletics Championship for blind at the Thyagaraj Sports Complex. Besides track and field, competition will also be organised in chess.