Exciting duel on cards in 100m dash in Indian Open U23 event
Patna, Sep 27: Sprinters, led by 100m senior national record holder Manikanta Hoblidhar and Animesh Kujur, will be the major attraction on the opening day of the fourth edition of Indian Open U23 athletics competition here on Saturday. The three-day event will be held at Patliputra Sports Complex here. The men’s 100m race has attracted a whopping 89 entries. There will be nine heats. The first eight heats will have 10 competitors while the last one will have nine sprinters. “We have 10 lanes for the 100m event. Hence it was decided to have 10 athletes in each of the heats,” Stanley Jones, head of technical team of Athletics Federation of India (AFI), said on the eve of the U23 competition. Karnataka’s Hoblidhar, who holds the senior national 100m record of 10.23 seconds set last year, will look ahead to maintain his supremacy. He will face stiff challenge from Odisha’s Kujur, one of the leading 200m sprinters in the country, who is competing in the 100m dash here. The women’s 100 heats will have 36 participants. The men’s 400m race has also attracted a good number of athletes. There are eight heats, with each having eight athletes. Going by the entries, 38 runners will contest the men’s 1500m event, while the two-day gruelling decathlon has attracted 24 entries. (PTI)
Macau Open: Treesa-Gayatri enter semifinals, Srikanth loses
Macau, Sep 27: India’s Kidambi Srikanth was ousted in men’s singles but the women’s pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand progressed to the semifinals of the Macau Open Super 300 badminton tournament here on Friday. Returning from an injury sustained in May, sixth seed Srikanth, a 2021 world championships silver medallist, struggled to find his rhythm against Hong Kong’s Ng Ka Long Angus, losing 16-21, 12-21 in just 31 minutes to bow out of the tournament. Treesa and Gayatri, seeded third, emerged as the lone Indians in the fray after they outwitted Chinese Taipei’s sixth seed Hsu Yin-Hui and Lon Jhih Yun 21-12, 21-17 in the women’s doubles quarterfinals. In the semifinals, the world number 23 Indians will face another Chinese Taipei pair Hsieh Pei Shan and Hung En-Tzu, seeded eighth. (PTI)
Megha, Tijan to lead India in world junior chess for blind
Bengaluru, Sep 27: Asian Para Games medallists Megha Chakraborty and Tijan Gawar will lead India’s campaign in the 12th IBCA World Junior and Women Chess Championship for the Blind and Visually Impaired to be held here from Saturday. The nine-day tournament, conducted under the aegis of All India Chess Federation for the Blind (AICFB), is being staged in Asia for the first time. Apart from the Indian challengers, top 32 chess players from nations such as USA, Poland, Sweden and Ukraine are participating in the event. (PTI)
Pak umpire Aleem Dar to retire at the end of 2024-25 domestic season
Karachi, Sep 27: Aleem Dar, the Pakistan umpire who has officiated in 448 international matches so far during his over 20-year career, on Friday decided to bid adieu to the profession at the end of the 2024-25 domestic season. Respected for his umpiring judgement and a clean career sheet, Dar has been a distinguished member of the ICC’s Elite and International Panels from 2003. It reflected in the 56-year-old Dar winning the David Shepherd Trophy for the ICC Umpire of the Year (2009-2011) thrice in his career. Dar has so far officiated in a record-breaking 145 Tests, 231 ODIs, 72 T20Is, 5 T20 World Cups, 181 First-Class matches, and 282 List-A matches. Dar said he had decided to retire from active umpiring as he wanted to focus on his foundation work but would be available to mentor and guide the new generation of Pakistan umpires. (PTI)
Lakshmi, Rathi named as match officials for Women’s T20 WC
Dubai, Sep 27: Match referee GS Lakshmi and umpire Vrinda Rathi were the Indian names in a 13-member all-female panel of match officials announced by the ICC on Friday for next month’s Women’s T20 World Cup to be held in the United Arab Emirates. The panel has three match referees and 10 umpires. The tournament will be held from October 3 to 20. Meanwhile, Australia’s Eloise Sheridan and Lauren Agenbag of South Africa have been appointed as on-field umpires for the marquee India vs Pakistan match at the Dubai International Stadium on October 6. Jacquline Williams of the West Indies will be the television umpire. The tournament begins on October 3 with the opening clash between Bangladesh and Scotland, which will be officiated by Claire Polosak of Australia and Agenbag. India will begin their campaign on October 4 against New Zealand, which will be officiated by Williams and Anna Harris of England, with Polosak as the TV umpire. (PTI)
Jr Weightlifting World C’ships: Martina shatters senior NR
Leon (Spain), Sep 27: Competing in the junior world championships, teenage Indian weightlifter Maibam Martina Devi on Friday smashed the senior national record in clean and jerk as well as total lift in the women’s +87kg weight category in a stunning performance here. The 18-year-old from Manipur also bettered her own junior national record in snatch. She, however, could not finish on the podium in all the three sections. Martina lifted 101kg in snatch to finish sixth in the seven-woman field and in the process bettered her own earlier junior national record of 95kg set in July last year in Greater Noida by 6kg. She missed the snatch senior national record of 104kg – which is currently in the name of Purnima Pandey – by 3kg. Then she lifted 136kg in clean and jerk which was 8kg better than the earlier senior national record of 128kg which was in the name of Manpreet Kaur of Punjab. She finished fifth in the competition. Martina’s earlier best – also junior national record – in clean and jerk is 123kg. That meant she lifted 13kg more than her previous best in clean and jerk. Martina’s total lift of 237kg – for a sixth-place finish – was 6kg more than the earlier national senior record of 231kg which was in the name of Ann Mariya M T of Kerala. Her earlier best in total lift – also junior national record – was 218kg. She thus improved her total lift by 19kgs. (PTI)