Thaindian News

Guangzhou (China), Nov 14 (ANI): Defending Asian Games billiards champion Pankaj Advani made it a Super Sunday for India here by winning the first gold of the Asian Games 2010 for his country in the English Billiards Singles event after the shooters added a silver and a bronze to India’s medals tally.

On day two of the sporting extravaganza, the Indians are in fifth position with five medals altogether. They have managed to win one gold, three silver and one bronze medals so far.

Advani came back from 1-2 down to first even the match at 2-2 and then clinched the final frame to beat his opponent from Myanmar, OO Nay Thway Oo.

Thway won the first frame 33-100 but lost the second 100-61, before winning the third handsomely with a 12-101 margin.

Advani, though, continued to fight to clinch the one-sided fourth frame 101-4, before taking the gold 100-45 by winning the deciding fifth frame.

Earlier, India’s women shooters won the team silver in the 10 metres air pistol event after Vijay Kumar bagged the individual bronze in the men’s event.

The trio of Heena Sidhu (381), Annu Raj Singh (380) and Sonia Rai (379) shot a total of 1,140 and missed the gold by a point at the Aoti Shooting Range. The South Korean team comprising Yunmi Gim (383), Byunghee Kim (379) and Ho Lim Lee (379) bagged the gold with 1,141 points.

The Chinese team of Sun Qi (385), Guo Wen Jun (382) and Su Yu Ling (372) settled for bronze with a total of 1,139 points.

Despite finishing on the podium in the team event, none of the Indian girls qualified for the final of the individual round. Heena, a gold medallist in the New Delhi Commonwealth Games, lost in the shoot-off after she was tied with two other shooters for the eighth place with 381 points. (ANI)