Anurag Thakur lauds Indian contingent for their performances in Commonwealth Games
Aug 08, 2022
New Delhi [India], August 8 : Union Sports Minister Anurag Thakur congratulated the Indian contingent for their fine performances in the ongoing Commonwealth Games 2022.
India has currently won 55 medals at the prestigious multi-sport event and sits at number five in the medal tally. India's medal tally consists of 18 gold, 15 silver and 22 bronze medals.
"The Target Olympic Podium Scheme and Khelo India initiatives of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, providing of training abroad and boarding and lodging facilities, enabling player's participation in competitions abroad have bore fruit since the morale of players was high. The performances of the players were really good, from weightlifting to wrestling. Yesterday in cricket as well, they almost won a Gold but still performed really well. Waiting for the players to get back and to honour them," Thakur told ANI.
India has had a solid CWG 2022 this year and has captured 55 medals despite the absence of shooting, one of its strongest events historically at the Commonwealth Games.
Weightlifter Sanket Sargar opened India's medal tally at the 2022 edition of the games, with silver in the men's 55 kg category. India dominated the sport of weightlifting and captured 10 medals in it. This also included gold medals won by Mirabai Chanu (women's 49 kg), Jeremy Lalrinnunga (men's 67 kg) and Achinta Sheuli (men's 73 kg).
Team India also dominated in wrestling, where the contingent played in 12 different categories and won medals in every single one of them. Six out of twelve medals are gold medals. Bajrang Punia (men's 65 kg), Sakshi Malik (women's 62 kg), Deepak Punia (men's 86 kg), Ravi Dahiya (men's 57 kg), Vinesh Phogat (women's 53 kg) and Naveen (men's 74 kg) are the wrestling gold medalists.
Another combat sports that India dominated was boxing. In this sport, India has won seven medals, with three of them being gold. Nitu Ghangas (women's 48 kg), Nikhat Zareen (women's 50 kg) and Amit Panghal (men's 51 kg) won gold for India.
India also captured a historic gold medal in Lawn Bowls, its first medal in the sport. The women's fours team consisting of Rupa Rani Tirkey, Nayanmoni Saikia, Lovely Choubey and Pinki Singh defeated South Africa in the final by 17-10.
Indian women's cricket team also created history and won a silver medal in their first CWG outing, though the team endured a heartbreaking nine-run loss to Australia in final.
Indian women's hockey team won a bronze medal after defeating New Zealand in bronze medal match.
Other than that, India has captured eight medals in athletics, five in table tennis, three each in badminton and judo, two in lawn bowls and squash and one in para powerlifting.
India's schedule for the final day of the event includes: -Badminton (Gold Medal Matches) 1:20pm: Women's Singles Finals - PV Sindhu
2:10pm - Men's Singles Finals - Lakshya Sen 3pm - Men's Doubles Finals - Chirag/Satwik
-Table Tennis - Starts at 3:30pm (Men's Singles' Final)
-Hockey (Gold Medal Match) 5pm - India vs Australia.