Indian Sports and Entertainment Industry

[Amber G.]

16-year-old Praggnanandhaa leads after Round 2 of the Oslo Esports Cup after winning both his matches so far with a game to spare!

[Vips]

Archery World Cup: India beat Great Britain to win gold in recurve mixed team event.

India's Ridhi Phor and Tarundeep Rai won the gold medal in recurve mixed team at the Archery World Cup in Antalya, Turkey on Sunday. The duo beat Great Britain's Bryony Pitman and Alex Wise in a shoot-off. This was India's second gold at the season-opening World Cup, a day after the men's compound team of Abhishek Verma, Rajat Chauhan and Aman Saini won their final.

The Indians came back from losing the first set and the final was level on 4-4 with the tiebreaker needed. In the shoot-off, India earned a narrow win (18-17) to claim gold. Seeded fifth, Rai and Phor had earlier defeated Spain 5-3 to reach the final.

Incidentally for the 38-year-old Rai, who won the Asian Games silver in Guangzhou 2010, this was his first-ever mixed team medal in the World Cup. As for 17-year-old Ridhi, this was her first ever World Cup medal as the duo showed amazing character to come back twice and seal the issue in the shoot-off with two 9s. The British duo of Bryony Pitman and Alex Wise shot 9 and 8.

It was a disastrous start for the new-look Indian pair as they shot the red-ring twice (8-8) to lose the first set by two points. However, Rai and Ridhi were able to level the score in the second set, thanks to two below-par rounds (7-8) by the British pair.

The third set was a high-scoring affair as Rai and Ridhi shot 39/40, but their rivals went ahead by a point, drilling in a perfect 40/40 with two Xs (closest to the centre) to push the Indian duo behind once again. Not ready to give up, Rai and Ridhi shot two 10s to put pressure on their rivals, who misfired in the red ring once, to seal the match.

[Amber G.]

Watching -- It's Carlsen-Praggnanandhaa today ... game is about to start...

(Praggnanandhaa is still leading (9 Point) after round 3 of tournament - Carlsen is at the second place (6 points))..

Game has started.
Edited later: Very nice game 1- Carlsen won the game - excellent game.
Edited later: Game 2 also won by Carlsen.
Game 3 also won by Carlsen (and the round).
Now Both Carlsen and Praggnanandhaa is tied for the top spot after round 4.

[hanumadu]

Our youngsters are doing pretty good in chess.
Arjun Erigaisi(18) is 2675. Gukesh, a month away from his 16th birthday, is 2660 in live ratings. A year ago Arjun was not even on the radar. Raunak Sadhwani (16) is 2628.

This is apart from Prag and Nihal Sarin. If they had not lost 1.5 years to the pandemic, some of them would have been 2700 already.

[Amber G.]

Heartbreak for young Pragg as he realized he just blundered ..
https://twitter.com/i/status/1518648776768040961

[Amber G.]

Was watching so update for those who may be interested .. One more round to go.
Pragg today lost to Duda .. and so
GMs Magnus Carlsen and Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa share the lead (12 points) ..followed closely by GMs Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Le Quang Liem, both with 11 points
GM Anish Giri ( 6 points) and GM Eric Hansen (3) are last player in the standings.
Pragg games were good.

Update today - watching the game... Pragg lost the first game against Anish Giri.
Update: Both the leaders (Pragg and Carlsen) unexpectedly lost!!! so it looks like Duda is going to win the tournament.

[Najunamar]

I saw the last game when Liam drew and thus Duda became the champion (felt very weird to see the draw/loss of a person sealing the victory of a person not even playing!)

[hanumadu]

India won against Malaysia in QFs and will win a medal for the first time in 43 years. It shows depth in the sport but Lakshya Sen has been underperforming of late.

[hanumadu]

Prannoy HS is a friggin hero and Srikanth Kidambi too who both beat higher ranked players. India is in the finals of Thomas cup for the first time ever.

[Suraj]

Whole semifinal here. Epic.

Lakshya Sen needs to step up in the final. We need two, if not all the singles to be won. Indonesia have the world's two best double's teams - between the Gideon/Sukamuljo and Ahsan/Setiawan pairs, they have two all time great teams to pick players from.

[hanumadu]

Lakshya Sen has been listless since the All England final. Hopefully, this will be the turning point.

[hanumadu]

What a week this has been for Indian badminton. India becomes only the sixth nation to become the Thomas Cup champions.
Lakshya Sen came to the party at the right time. The doubles team exacted sweet revenge against the Indonesians for their All England cup loss though only Sukamuljo was part of the Indonesian team then.

And of course Srikanth Kidambi has been stellar all week.

Indonesia has won 14 out of 30 Thomas cup championships so far and were in the finals 21 times. To beat them is truly a spectacular achievement.

[ritesh]

Congratulations to all the players!!

[Vips]

Thomas Cup Finals 2022 | India vs Indonesia

[hanumadu]

All the top Indonesian players seem to be christian with the exception of a few doubles players. This has been the case for decades now.

[fanne]

If you do not want to watch all 4 hours watch this - @1:18 for first game win. Watch 2:15 for next 2-3 minutes. 2:43 for second game win, third win 3:43 mark and celebrations after that

[Suraj]

Shocking result. Definitely didn't expect the win, and I choked on my morning tea reading the margin. Indeed sweet revenge. Sukamuljo and Ahsan are individually alltime greats... but with their own teams. Indonesia were stupid to field a scratch combination and looked nervous and burdened by their own history.

Amazing work by the boys, and the excellent coaches. Gopichand's head is probably about to explode now, Vimal Kumar and Matthias Boe (one half of the legendary Boe-Mo doubles team) did a great job. Boe was dancing and jumping around with the team after they beat his native Denmark in the semifinal.

[hanumadu]

The Prakash Padukone badminton academy seems to have got a second wind in recent times. That augurs well for India. And we now have the resources to have personal coaches for players and hire foreign coaches.

[Suraj]

Definitely good to have two top flight badminton academies both led by Indian All-England champions, offering a range of coaching capabilities and even competing.

After two Uber Cup bronzes from the women, I was hoping they'd make the final. The men doing so and going all the way is a little unexpected given we're so near yet so far on the men's side, but this is a tremendous boost.

Even Boe was very happy - he was one of the greatest doubles teams of the 2000s, but got trampled in Thomas Cup by China or Indonesia. Denmark's only title came in 2016 after he retired, so it's his first Thomas Cup gold too. Denmark has lost in the final 8 times.
Correction: he was on the 2016 team but didn't play the final - already in his late 30s by then.

Thomas Cup for a long time went to either Indonesia or China. Malaysia was a big power about 50-60 years ago, but not anymore. But in the last 10 years, Japan, Denmark and now India have become first time winners.

[Vips]

Asia Cup hockey: India beat Japan 2-1 in first Super 4 league match, avenge pool loss.

The Indian men's hockey team scored two fantastic field goals to beat Japan 2-1 in its first Super 4 league match and avenge its loss in the pool stage of the Asia Cup here on Saturday.

The defending champions, who lost 2-5 against Japan in the pool stage, scored two eye-catching field goals through Manjeet (8th minute) and Pawan Rajbhar (35th) to register a narrow win.