Deepika Kumari finishes 8th, qualifies for elimination round

Deepika Kumari, India's best bet in women's archery showed good form to come up as the eighth best in the ranking round of the women's individual recurve event at the Gyeyang Asiad Archery Field here today.

The 20-year-old Ranchi-born archer, a double gold medal winner at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, had a combined score of 1337 over four distances – 70m, 60m, 50m and 30m – and now will take on Uzbekistan's Munira Nurmanova in the pre-quarter final elimination round on September 26.

The three other Indian women – Laxmirani Majhi, Laishram Bambayla Devi and Pranitha Vardhaneni – had rankings of 15, 20 and 30 with respective scores of 1319, 1301 and 1271.

Deepika and Laxmirani would be seen in the individual elimination rounds, the latter dueling against Sharbekova Asel of Kyrgystan.

Thanks to the women quartet's efforts India’s rank was 5th in the team event with a score of 3957 which was well behind those of strong gold medal favourites South Korea (4081), China (4044), Japan (3994) and Chinese Taipei (3966).

India, with Deepika, Laxmirani and Bombayla Devi representing it, would take on Hong Kong in the team quarter finals.

The Indian men's team was ranked 6th with a total score of 3923 behind Korea (4101), Japan (4001), Malaysia (3955), Taipei (3951) and China (3928) over the distances of 90, 70, 50 and 30m.

Atanu Das finished with the best score of 1316 among the Indian men with an overall ranking of 17th followed by Jayanta Talukdar (1307, 17th)), Tarundeep Rai (1300, 22nd) and Rahul Banerjee (1296, 25th).

Das and Talukdar will be seen in the individual elimination round and in the team eliminations with Rai. Tomorrow the elimination round of the compound event will be gone through and India's Abhishek Verma, Sandeep Kumar (individual) along with Rajat Chauhan (third team member) would be seen in action among men.

In the women's elimination, Trisha Deb and Purvasha Shende have made the individual elimination round and will also figure in the team elimination with Jyoti Surekha Vennam.

Archery Association of India's treasurer, Virendra Sachdeva, is confident that the team will attain a medal in both recurve and compound events. "Dono mein medal ki ummeed hain (There are chances of medals in both)," Sachdeva told reporters.