New Delhi [India], October 5 (ANI): The Indian males’s cricket staff arrived again residence following a gold medal win within the cricket match on the just lately concluded Asian Games.Â
Ishan Kishan, Sanju Samson, and Arshdeep Singh had been among the many gamers who had been captured on the IGI Airport in New Delhi.Â
Coming to the gold medal match in opposition to arch-rivals Pakistan, India opted to bat first after successful the toss. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s blitz of 15 in 9 balls, with two sixes, was short-lived, however Abhishek Sharma delivered an explosive fifty, scoring 61 in 28 balls, with three fours and 7 sixes. Ishan Kishan (20) and skipper Shreyas Iyer (21) saved the ship regular, laying down the platform for Tilak (51* in 22 balls, with three fours and 4 sixes) and Shivam Dube (27* in 15 balls, with a 4 and two sixes) to take India to 211/6, with the pair placing up a 62-run stand for the sixth wicket.
During the chase, Pakistan was down at 39/3, however Hasan Nawaz (96 in 51 balls, with 5 fours and 7 sixes) fought, with Pakistan restricted to 192/6. Axar Patel and Washington (2/29) delivered sensational spells, whereas Shivam Dube (2/33) additionally took two wickets.Â
India completed fourth within the total medal standings with 21 gold, 27 silver and 37 bronze medals. China dominated the Games with 341 medals, together with 169 gold, whereas hosts Japan completed second with 269 medals, together with 83 gold. South Korea had been third with 150 medals, together with 39 gold, in keeping with Olympics.com. India’s 85-medal haul was beneath the document 106 medals, together with 28 gold, gained on the Hangzhou Games in 2023, however the marketing campaign featured a number of landmark achievements throughout disciplines.
The largest success got here within the three staff sports activities the place India entered each males’s and ladies’s competitions — cricket, kabaddi and hockey — and returned with gold medals in all six occasions. In cricket, India accomplished a golden double after the ladies’s staff gained the title earlier than the boys’s aspect defeated arch-rivals Pakistan by 19 runs within the last. The males’s staff, powered by contributions from Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma and Axar Patel, added the gold to the ladies’s staff’s emphatic 147-run victory over Sri Lanka within the girls’s last.
Kabaddi produced one other clear sweep. India’s girls defeated Iran 37-34 in a carefully fought last to efficiently defend their title, whereas the boys’s staff got here from behind to beat Iran 40-34. The males’s gold was India’s ninth in 10 editions since kabaddi turned a males’s staff sport on the Asian Games in 1990. The solely exception got here in 2018, when India gained bronze. The girls’s staff, in the meantime, continued its dominance because the sport’s introduction to the ladies’s programme in 2010.
Hockey accomplished India’s clear sweep within the staff sports activities. The girls’s staff ended a 44-year await an Asian Games medal by defeating China 1-0 within the last, with Lalremsiami scoring the decisive objective within the tenth minute. The victory was India’s first girls’s hockey gold on the Asian Games since 1982.
The males’s staff adopted with a 5-1 win over Malaysia within the last, efficiently defending its Asian Games title. It was India’s fifth males’s hockey gold after victories in 1966, 1998, 2014 and 2022, and the primary time the Indian males’s and ladies’s hockey groups gained gold on the similar version.
With these wins, India’s males’s and ladies’s hockey groups certified for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, reserving their seats efficiently. (ANI)