Brisbane, April 7 (PTI): The focus is firmly on teen sensation Manu Bhaker as the fancied Indian shooting team eyes a head start at the 21st Commonwealth Games and continue its recent dominance of the discipline in the quadrennial extravaganza.
The 16-year-old Manu will line up alongside the experienced Heena Sidhu in women’s 10m air pistol event. Also in action will be the impressive Ravi Kumar and Deepak Kumar in men’s 10m air rifle. Saniya Sheikh and Maheshwari Chauhan will represent India, a powerhouse in CWG, in women’s skeet.
The buzz is certainly around Manu, who had clinched a double gold in her maiden senior ISSF World Cup in Mexico last month. She later grabbed two more gold in the junior World Cup in Sydney.
Smit Singh and Sheeraj Sheikh will also compete in men’s skeet qualification.
With shooters like Chain Singh, Jitu Rai, Omprakash Mitharwal, Anjum Moudgil, Tejaswini Sawant, Heena and Shreyasi Singh competing in more than one event, the selectors were able to constructively utilise the quota of 15 men and 12 women and make it a strong squad.
Nine men’s and eight women’s events will be held in rifle, pistol and shotgun categories.
Then there is Olympic bronze medallist Gagan Narang, a veteran of many battles.
Having already stamped their class on the big stage, the young shooters in the national team will again jostle for space with the big players.
The abundance of talent is complemented by the confident approach which the likes of Manu, Mehuli Ghosh, Anish Bhanwala and Anjum are expected to display.
The likes of Jitu, Narang and Apurvi Chandela, along with other experienced shooters like Heena, Tejaswini Sawant, Sanjeev Rajput, Manavjit Singh Sandhu and double trap World Cup gold medallist Ankur Mittal can be a handful for other competing nations.
Some of the Indians have the experience of shooting at this range, which also hosted the Commonwealth championships in November 2017, and that could be of some help.
India has been a dominant force in shooting at the CWG with 17 of the country’s 64 medals at the Glasgow Games in 2014.
In 2010, India claimed a staggering 30-plus podium finishes, and the expectations remain the same eight years on.
