Asian Games 2023: India win gold in tennis, squash, script historic wins in badminton, table tennis and hockey

Indian athletes had another good day in office on Saturday, winning two gold medals along with as many silver and a bronze, taking their overall medal count in the 19th Asian Games to 38.

India won gold in the tennis mixed doubles and squash men’s events, defeating Chinese Taipei and Pakistan respectively. Indians also assured themselves of a medal in several other sports, including in table tennis where the women’s doubles pair of Suthirtha and Ayhika Mukherjee stunned China.

Squash wasn’t the only event of the day where India came out on top against Pakistan — they also bossed their neighbours in the men’s hockey Pool A clash, winning it by a record 10-2 margin.

Here’s a detailed look at the medals won along with some of the other key developments on Day 7 of the 2023 Asian Games involving Indian athletes.

Silver in mixed team 10m air pistol

Divya Thadigol Subbaraju and Sarabjot Singh were the first medal winners for India on Saturday as they won the silver in the 10m air pistol mixed team event. The gold was won by China’s Bowen Zhang and Ranxin Jiang who defeated the India pair 16-14 in the shoot-off to grab the yellow metal.

The bronze in the event was won by Iran’s Joharikhou Amir and Haniyeh Rostamiyan and South Korea’s Wonho Lee and Bomi Kim.

This was India’s 19th medal in shooting at the ongoing Games, which is India’s best ever tally in the sport at an Asiad. Their previous best was 14 at the 2006 Doha Asian Games.

With the 10m air pistol mixed team medal, India have so far won six gold, three silver, and five bronze in shooting in the Asian Games 2023.

Gold in tennis mixed doubles

Rohan Bopanna and Rutuja Bhosale, meanwhile, clinched the first of the two gold medals that India won on Saturday.

Bopanna and Bhosale defeated Chinese Taipei’s Tsung-hao Huang and En-shuo Liang 2-6, 6-3, 10-4 in mixed doubles lash to win gold for India. This was India’s second medal in tennis at Asiad 2023. Earlier, Saketh Myneni and Ramkumar Ramanathan won silver in men’s doubles.

However, with only two medals, Indian tennis has registered its worst outing at Asiad since the turn of the century.

Gold in men’s squash

India won their second gold medal of the day, and their 10th overall in the 19th Asian Games after defeating Pakistan 2-1 in a thrilling men’s squash final.

Abhay Singh defeated Noor Zaman 3-2 (11-7, 9-11, 8-11, 11-9, 12-10) in the deciding tie, winning four consecutive points to take the final game 12-10 from the jaws of defeat.

Mahesh Mangaonkar was blanked 0-3 (11-8, 11-3, 11-2) by Iqbal Nasir in Match 1 of the gold medal clash before Saurav Ghoshal helped level the contest with a 3-0 (11-5, 11-1, 11-3) win over Muhammad Asim Khan.

Silver and bronze in men’s 10,000m

India also completed a 2-3 finish in the men’s 10,000-metre race with distance runners Kartik Kumar and Gulveer Singh winning silver and bronze respectively.

Kartik won the silver with a timing of 28:15.38s while Gulveer clocked 28:17.21s to claim the bronze. Both the Indians sneaked into medal contention in the last 100 metres after three of the fellow competitors fell in succession after bumping into each other.

Birhanu Yemataw Balew of Bahrain won the gold medal with a timing of 28:13.62 seconds.

India stun China in table tennis women’s doubles

Suthirtha Mukherjee and Ayhika Mukherjee pulled off a stunning 3-1 victory over the world No 2-ranked pair of Chen Meng and Yidi Wang in the women’s doubles quarter-finals in table tennis.

Suthirtha and Ayhika thus ensured the Indian contingent will not return empty handed in table tennis by qualifying for the semi-finals and ensuring at least a bronze.

The feat is all the more commendable on the part of the Mukherjees given India have never won a medal in the women’s doubles category of table tennis in the continental event.

India however, bowed out of the women’s singles and men’s doubles events with Commonwealth Games gold medallist Manika Batra and the pair of Manush Shah and Manav Thakkar suffering quarter-final defeats.

Manika went down against world No. 4 Yidi Wang of China 8-11, 12-10, 6-11, 4-11, 14-12, 5-11 and her defeat also marked the end of India’s campaign in the singles event at the Hangzhou Games.

Shah and Thakkar, on the other hand, were beaten by South Korean pair Woojin Jang and Jonghoon Lim 8-11, 11-7, 10-12, 11-6, 9-11 in the last eight.

India enter final of men’s team badminton event

Kidambi Srikanth held his nerve from a game down in a nerve-wracking deciding match against Geonyeop Cho as India defeated South Korea in the badminton men’s team semi-finals to assure themselves of at least a silver.

Srikanth defeated Cho 12-21 21-16 21-14 to help India clinch the decider after India had won both of their singles ties through HS Prannoy and Lakshya Sen but lost both doubles rubbers.

The Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Chirag Shetty and Arjun MR-Dhruv Kapila pairs lost the doubles matches.

This is India’s maiden entry into the final of the team event at the continental showpiece and they’re set to fight for a first-ever gold medal in Asian Games badminton against powerhouse China.

India thrash Pakistan 10-2

India inflicted a record defeat on Pakistan in their men’s hockey Pool A preliminary tie on Saturday, thrashing their neighbours 10-2 to further cement themselves as outright favourites for gold.

Harmanpreet Singh scored in the 11th, 17th, 33rd and 34th minutes while Varun Kumar (41st and 54th) struck twice. Mandeep Singh (8th), Sumit (30th), Samsher Singh (46th) and Lalit Kumar Upadhyay (49th) were the other goal getters.

Pakistan reduced the margin through Muhammad Khan (38th) and Abdul Rana (45th) as India toyed their opponents for large part of their penultimate pool match.

This was the 180th match between the two teams and the 8-goal margin win was the biggest-ever in the history of India-Pakistan hockey.

India’s earlier biggest victory margin was 7-1 against Pakistan registered in 2017. Pakistan’s 7-1 win in the final of 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi was their biggest win against India.

With inputs from PTI