New Delhi, Aug 23 (IANS) Former world champion Dola Banerjee will lead the 12-member Indian archery squad for the Commonwealth Games to be held here Oct 3-14.
The team was selected after the trials at the Sports Authority of India (SAI) Eastern Centre in Kolkata.
The recurve men’s team will comprise world no.9 Jayanta Talukdar, world no.20 Rahul Banerjee and Tarundeep Rai.
Dola, world no.11, will lead India’s charge in the women’s recurve teams with L. Bombayala and Dipika Kumari.
Archery will be part of the Commonwealth Games for the first time since 1982. The event will be in four categories – recurve men, recurve women, compound men and compound women.
While announcing the squad, Archery Association of India’s (AAI) secretary-general Paresh Mukherjee said 24 medals are stake and if Indian archers perform well, they will boost India’s overall tally.
‘The trials conducted were very competitive. It was tough to pick the best 12 out of 24 probables. We have trained better than ever in the last two years because of the support from the government. We are expecting around 16 medals,’ Mukherjee told IANS from Kolkata.
The names of the officials and the support staff will be announced later. The archery event will take place at the Yamuna Sports Complex Oct 4-10.
The squad:
Recurve men: Jayant Talukdar, Tarundeep Rai and Rahul Banerjee.
Recurve women: Dola Banerjee, L. Bombayala and Dipika Kumari.
Compound men: P. Srithar, C.H. Jignesh and Ritul Chatterjee.
Compound women: Jhanu Hansda, Gagandeep Kaur and Bhagyawati Chanu.
