TheSportsCampus

Anju Bobby George, India's greatest hope of a medal in the athletics events, bowed out without as much as a whimper in today's Long Jump competition. The 31 year-old who finished 6th in the Athens Olympics failed to put up a time in her three attempts and will be extremely disappointed that all three of her jumps were fouls. She later complained that an aggravated ankle injury in her trial jump plagued her during the event and was perhaps worsened by her 2nd Jump where she felt she landed rather badly.

World No. 79, Sharath Kamal who received a bye in th e preliminary round of the Men's Table Tennis Singles event won his first round match today 4 games to 2 against left-handed qualifier Alfredo Carneros.

Carneros started the better of the two pulling ahead in the middle of the first game to win it comprehensively 11-6. Sharath started the 2nd game aggressively going ahead 4-0 and then 7-3. Carneros fought back to level it at 10-10 before Sharath rattled off a couple of points to knick it 12-10. The next two games were again split between the pair, but at 2 games all, Alfredo started making too many unforced errors and Sharath pulled away to a wrap up the next two games comfortably.

Final Score: 6-11, 12-10, 11-8, 9-11, 11-6, 11-7

The win puts Sharath in the 32 player draw for the 2nd round of the competition which will not feature any of the seeded players till Round 3.

TT Competition Structure
Preliminary Round - Features players ranked outside the Top 100 in the World competing for 13 places in Round 1.

Round 1 - Players ranked 46 and above compete with the 13 qualifies for 16 places in Round 2.

Round 2 - Features all the unseeded players in the event as they compete for 16 places and an opportunity to pit themselves against the 16 seeded players who received byes till round 3.

At each stage a fresh draw is done to decide who plays who.

The only other Indian to feature today was wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt. Dutt received a bye in his first round and won his second round match against Baurzhan Orazgaliyev of Kazakhstan 8:2. He next faced off against Kenichi Yumoto of Japan in the quarterfinals.

Dutt won the 1st period 1:0, but lost the next two 4:1 and 2:1 respectively to bow out of the event. His opponent Yumoto went on later to win the Bronze medal in the event.

Tomorrow is a key day for India in the games with their last hopes for a medal the boxing duo of Vijender and Jitender Kumar competing in the quarterfinals of their respective events.