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Golfers, sailors clinch silver as India bag 4 medals

By The Assam Tribune

GUANGZHOU, Nov 20 (PTI): Golfers and sailors contributed to the medal collection by fetching a silver each while cueist Aditya Mehta and racqueter Saurav Ghosal bagged bronze as India dipped to the 14th position on the medal table on the eighth day of competitions in the 16th Asian Games here today.

But the failure to win enough medals, particularly gold, resulted in India slipping to 14th position in the medal rostrum, their lowest spot in the competitions so far.

With the addition of four more medals, India�s medal tally climbed to two gold, 10 silver and 12 bronze. India had finished tenth on the medals table in the last Asian Games in Doha with a tally of 10-17-26.

There was no let-up in China�s strangehold in the Games as they continued their gold harvest to maintain their position atop the table with a whopping tally of 137-64-66. South Korea (52-43-56) and Japan (29-52-55) were in the second and third position respectively.

The quartet of Rashid Khan (72), Abhijit Singh Chadha (76), Abhinav Lohan (72) and Rahul Bajaj (72) won a silver with a combine four-day score of 10-over 874 to give the first medal for the country from golf.

The Indian sailing team comprising Balraj, Balakrishna Helegaonkar, Atool Sinha, Farokh Tarapore and Sekhar Singh Yadav also had their moment of glory when they clinched the silver in the open match racing event.

The two bronze medals came through Aditya Mehta who lost his snooker singles semi-final encounter and Sourav Ghoshal, who lost in the semi-finals of squash singles event.

The women�s hockey team also kept themselves on course for a bronze medal with a thumping 6-0 win over Kazakhstan in their penultimate round robin match.

The golfers provided the spark by winning the silver in the team event. However, in the individual competitions, in which Shiv Kapur won a gold in the 2002 edition, the Indians could not make much of a mark.

Rashid was highest-placed at tied fourth with a total of three-under 285. Abhinav was tied ninth with a four-day tally of three-over 291. Rahul was way down at tied 39th after totalling 22-over 310. In men�s snooker singles, Aditya had to settle for a bronze after losing to Chun Marco Fu Ka of Hong Kong 1-4 in the semifinals. His bronze was India�s fourth medal from cue sports, including a gold won by Pankaj Advani in the billiards event. The other two medals were in men�s snooker team event (silver) and men�s 8-ball pool (bronze by Alok Kumar).

In squash, Saurav Ghosal settled for a bronze medal after losing his semifinal clash to top-seed Mohammad Azlan Iskandar of Malaysia in the men�s singles.

World ranked 25 Ghosal waged a grim battle against an opponent ranked ten places higher than him in the world chart to eventually lose 5-11, 11-6, 5-11, 10-12 at the Town Gymnasium.

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