After remaining medal-less on the very first day of Commonwealth Games 2022, India finally opened their account on Saturday. Day two saw many high-profile athletes from the Indian contingent challenge for the gold. Mirabai Chanu, India’s star lifter brought the first Gold in India’s bag after dominating the 49kg category.
She defeated her opponent by lifting a massive 29kgs more to outclass the competition. India won three more medals to fill their total medal tally with four. Let’s look at how India performed at the Commonwealth Games 2022 on day 2.
Weightlifting
All four of India’s medals have come in weightlifting and that is enough to justify the importance of this sport. Mirabai Chanu owned the 49kg category and won India’s first Gold medal in CWG 2022.
Earlier, Sanket Sargar opened India’s account by winning a silver medal in the 55kg men’s category. He missed the gold medal by just one kg. Gururaja Poojary was the second weightlifter to win a medal for India. In the 61 kg category, Poojary won bronze. Bindyarni Devi was the fourth to win a medal (silver) in the Women’s 55kg category.
Table Tennis
Table tennis brought out disappointment for India as the women’s team lost to a lower-ranked Malaysia. Defending champions led by Manika Batra could not halt the Malaysian challenge and was clean swept in round four.
Indian Men’s team beat Northern Ireland by 3-0 to finish top of their group with three wins out of three.
Hockey
India’s women’s hockey team, having won their first match against Ghana by 5-0, beat Wales 3-1 in their second match to head into the next round.
Boxing
Tokyo Olympic medallist, Lovlina Borgohain beat New Zealand’s Ariane Nicholson in the 70kg category. She now moves to the Round of eight. Mohammad Husammuddin defeated South African Amzolele Dyeyi in the 57 kg category to move into the quarter-final. He will face his next opponent from Bangladesh.
Badminton
Indian badminton team gave a dominating performance to thump Sri Lanka by 5-0 in the Mixed Team event. They also outclassed Australia by 4-1 in the final Group Stage game.
Marathon
Marathon brought a poor performance for India at the CWG 2022. Nitender Singh Rawat could only manage a 12th place finish after completing the event in 2:19:22 a huge 8:27 minutes slower than the gold medal winner. He was also more than three minutes slower than his personal best.
Swimming
Kushagra Rawat with a time of 1:54.56 finished last in Men’s 200m freestyle. Overall, Rawat finished 24th and missed a place in the final.
Srihari Nataraj with a time of 51.31s finished seventh in the 100m backstroke in CWG 2022.
Squash
Saurav Ghosal reached pre-quarters with a 3-0 win against Shamil Wakeel of Sri Lanka. Ramit Tandon had to pull out of the match due to an injury.
Joshna Chinappa reached pre-quarters with a 3-0 win in the second round. Sunayna Kuruvilla lost in the second round against Aifa Azman by 3-0.
India’s youngest athlete in the commonwealth Games, Anahat Singh lost 3-0 to Wales’s Emily Whitlock.
