Telangana athletes bag three gold at 36th National Games

Telangana athletes had a good outing as they added four medals – three gold and a silver – at the ongoing 36th National Games in Gujarat on Thursday.

Hyderabad: Telangana athletes had a good outing as they added four medals – three gold and a silver – at the ongoing 36th National Games in Gujarat on Thursday.

While Indian shuttler B Sai Praneeth and women’s doubles duo of Sikki Reddy and Gayatri Pullela won top honours, the women’s basketball team clinched the yellow metal with a close victory over Tamil Nadu in the final. Meanwhile, State swimmer Vritti Agarwal continued her dream run with a third medal in swimming when she clinched a silver.

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Top seed Sai Praneeth dished out a spirited performance to record a 21-11 12-21 21-16 victory over Karnataka’s Mithun Manjunath in the men’s singles final. Thirty-year-old Praneeth’s success meant that Telangana grabbed three gold medals in badminton. They had won the mixed team and women’s doubles titles earlier. Praneeth dominated the opening game, jumping to an 8-2 lead and never looking back.

However, Mithun came back stronger in the second game but eventually could do nothing but acknowledge that he was outplayed. “Once the game started to drift away from me, I played it cool to concentrate for the third game,” said Praneeth. Mithun kept pace with Praneeth for the most of the third game but the experienced campaigner did enough to quell the challenge of his young opponent.

“Once I took the lead at 16-15, I played it safe. I saw Mithun was tiring and I had just put the shuttle in,” said Praneeth, who finished the match with a smash. The Telangana duo of Sikki Reddy and Gayatri clinched the women’s doubles gold by beating national champions Ashwini Bhat and Shikha Gautam of Karnataka 21-14 21-11 in a lopsided final.

In the women’s basketball final, Telangana women recorded a hard-fought 67–62 win over Tamil Nadu. Though Tamil Nadu took a solid 23-7 lead in the first quarter, they regrouped well in the second to score 24 points and restrict the opposition to just 12 points to reduce the margin at 35-31 at half-time.

Pushpa scored 13 points, including two three-pointers. The third quarter was a close one with Telangana and Tamil Nadu scoring 18 and 19 points respectively. In the fourth quarter, Aswanthy converted two free throws and a three-pointer to level scores at 54-all and went on to win a thriller. For Telangana, S Pushpa scored 23 while P Priyanka added 14

In swimming, Vritti clocked 17.58.76 seconds in the 1500 metres freestyle event. Delhi’s Bhavya Sachavdava (17.54.07s) took the gold while Karnataka’s Hanshika Ramachandra took the bronze.

Results:

Badminton: Women’s singles: Aakarshi Kashyap (Chhattisgarh) bt Malvika Bansod (Maharashtra) 21-8 22-20. Women’s doubles: N Sikki Reddy/Gayatri Gopichand (Telangana) bt Shikha Gautam/Ashiwini Bhat (Karnataka) 21-14 21-11. Men’s singles: B Sai Praneeth(TS) bt Mithun M. (KTK) 21-11 12-21 21-16. Men’s doubles: Ravikrishna P.S./Sankarprasad Udayakumar(KER) bt Hariharan Amsakarunan/Ruban Kumar(TN) 21-19, 21-19. Mixed Doubles: Sai Pratheek/Ashwini Ponnappa (Karnataka) bt Rohan Kapoor/Kanika Kanwal (Delhi) 21-15 21-13;

Basketball Final: Telangana (S Pushpa 23; P Priyanka 14, R Anbarasi 13; Aswathy S Thampi 12) 67 bt Tamil Nadu 62 (Darshini 18).