Indian sports news wrap, January 7

WEIGHTLIFTING

National Weightlifting Championships

Lovepreet Singh and Gurdeep Singh took the men’s 109kg and +109kg titles respectively on the concluding day of the National Weightlifting Championships at Itanagar on Sunday.

Lovepreet totalled 345kg to win by 13kg. Gurdeep’s 362kg was 10kg more than his nearest rival.

-Y.B. Sarangi

CHESS

Chennai Open: Srihari draws Fedorov in final round to emerge champion

LR Srihari secured a draw against Belarusian Alexei Fedorov in the final round to emerge champion in the Chennai Open International Grandmaster Chess Tournament 2023 here on Sunday.

Srihari registered seven wins, and three draws on his way to the title.

With an ELO rating of 2500, Srihari is now away from his third and final GM Norm.

Nguyen Duc Hoa (Vietnam) took the second spot.

-PTI

GOLF

Samay Wadhawan progresses to second round of All India Snooker Open

Samay Wadhawan notched up a comfortable 4-0 win over Md. Shafique Khatri in the best-of-7-frame qualifying draw first round match of the NSCI Baulkline 3.0 All India Snooker Open here on Sunday.

Samay registered a 60-52, 51-7, 75-45, 62-8 victory over Shafique to move to the second round.

Pune-based Shivam Arora also waltzed to a 4-0 victory over Hormuz Pardiwala in another match.

Arora showed great touch and with breaks of 74 in the second frame and a 49 break later gave Pardiwala no chance of putting up a fight and raced to a 67-20, 74-0, 77-8 and 91-19 victory.

Rahul Narang of Matoshree Club was also on a roll as he eased past Jai Shroff 4-0 (80-32, 71-30, 69-51 and 62-53) to enter the second round.

Akash Israni went down fighting to Suyog Mukadam 3-4 in an engrossing affair.

In a nervy seventh frame, Mukadam came out stronger to win the decider with a 35-51, 49-63, 49-18, 84-37, 45-35, 38-51 57-49 verdict and progress to the second round.

In another keenly contested match, Gaurav Prabhu got the better of Karan Chugani 4-3 (52-14, 35-68, 49-58. 25-64, 47-2, 59-25 and 62-39) to also move into the next round.

-PTI

TENNIS

ITF Juniors: Strong presence from USA and Europe to pose challenge to Indian players

The strong presence of players from the USA and Europe should pose a stiff challenge for the Indian players to make a mark in the ITF junior tennis tournament to be played at the DLTA Complex from Monday.

Only Rethin Pranav in the boys section, and Maaya Rajeshwaran in the girls section, have got a seeding, of fifth and sixth respectively, among the Indian players, which should provide a fair hint of the strong field.

Rethin had lost in the semifinals and Maaya got beaten in the quarterfinals last week in Chandigarh and may have to come up with something special to better their performance this week, in the cold environment.

Quite interestingly, Rethin opens against his doubles partner Moise Kouame of France, who had beaten him on his way to the title in Chandigarh.

As luck would have it, Maaya also meets the champion of last week, Maria Golovina, in the first round. Maaya had played a three-setter against Maria in Chandigarh.

Overall, it should be lively action this week, from some of the best juniors in the world.

-Kamesh Srinivasan