Thiruvananthapuram: Commonwealth and Asian Games champion shooter Jitu Rai opened his campaign with two medals while records continued to tumble by a heap in the swimming competition but the mood turned somber at the 35th National Games after a young netball player lost his life in a freak accident on the second day of the event here on Monday.
On yet another exciting day of competitions, there was gloom as well after Maharashtra’s 21-year-old netball player Mayuresh Pawar died in an apparent case of drowning at a nearby beach here while on his way back with the team from a practice session.
After initial reports of a cardiac arrest, the postmortem of the deceased player made it clear that he died due to drowning after falling into the waters at the Shankhumugham beach. The tragedy left the Maharashtra team shattered and it was not yet clear whether the team would continue to participate in netball.
On the competition front, Services Sports Control Board sprung to the top with 12 medals (8 gold, 1 silver and 3 bronze), followed by Haryana (7 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze) and Madhya Pradesh (5 gold, 1 silver and 6 bronze).
Despite the tragedy, the show went on in other events across the state with the swimming pool offering the most exciting action for the second day running. First up was the 1500m men’s event in which local favourite Sajan Prakash brought the house down by bagging the gold medal with a new meet record of 15:55.78s.
Another record sank in the 800m women’s event when Maharashtra’s Akankhsha Vohra clocked 9:15.30s to break the meet record by a second. Karnataka’s Malvika V (9:23.95s) bagged the silver, while Maharshtra’s Monique Gandhi (9:29.93s) came third.
One more record tumbled when Sandeep Sejwal, representing Madhya Pradesh, breached his own mark to clinch the 200m men’s breastroke gold with a timing of 2:13.53s. He was followed by the Kerala duo of Anoop Augustine (2:18.11s) and Arun S (2:19.73s).
Maharashtra broke their own meet record in the 4x100m women’s medley when the quartet of Monique, Aditi Dhumatkar, Avantika Chavan and Jyotsna Pansare pulled off a timing of 4:04.45s.
The shooting range had some high-profile names in action — the most prominent being ‘Golden Boy’ Jitu Rai (Services Sports Control Board). He lived upto the moniker at least in the 50m pistol team event before settling for a bronze in the individual competition.
In the team event, Jitu combined with Om Prakash and Gurpal Singh to shoot gold with a score of 1667, way ahead of silver-medallists Punjab (1643) and Haryana (1612).
Jitu was expected to get a golden double but the pint-sized dynamo, without doubt India’s best shooter internationally in the last one year, was hampered by the excruciating heat, which affected his grip on the pistol.
The shooter settled for a bronze after managing a score of 168.1 in the final round. The gold went to Karnataka’s PN Prakash (190.1) followed by Punjab’s Amanpreet Singh (187.4).
A prominent name, which fell by the wayside in the final round, was Samresh Jung, who was representing Himachal Pradesh in the Games.
In the women’s 10m air rifle competition, veteran Anjali Bhagwat combined with Ayonika Paul and Pooja Ghatkar to clinch a gold medal for Maharashtra in the team event after the trio totalled 1241.
There was double delight for Maharashtra in the individual competition where Pooja snatched the gold from teammate Ayonika Paul in a shoot-off after both totalled 208.1 in the regulations shots. Apurvi Chandela added a bronze to Rajasthan’s kitty with a score of 187.
In squash, Sourav Ghosal, representing Tamil Nadu, expectedly entered the quarterfinals with a comfortable 11-4 11-5 11-7 win over Goa’s Yash Fadte. In the women’s competition, Joshna Chinappa also made it to the last-eight stage after outplaying Manipur’s Rebecca Devi 11-3 11-0 11-2. (PTI)
