Rio Olympics: Shuttler Srikanth Wins First Group Match, Women’s Hockey Disappoints 

Rio de Janeiro: Indian shuttler Kidambri Srikanth started his Olympic campaign in superb fashion, breezing past Lino Muzon of Mexico in straight games in the opening match of Group H in the men’s singles event here.

The only Indian to qualify in the men’s singles event, Srikanth won 21-11, 21-17 in 41 minutes here at the Pavilion 4 of Rio Centro on Thursday. Srikanth will be playing his next match against Henri Hurskainen of Sweden on Sunday. In few early exchanges in the first game, the Indian shuttler was prevailing 7-5 due to few unforced errors from the Mexican before Kidamdi stepped up his game, attacking strongly to take 10 points on the trot to build up a 15-10 lead.

Srikanth will be playing his next match against Henri Hurskainen of Sweden on Sunday.

With the combination of his diagonal and down the line smashes creating plenty of problems for the Mexican, Srikanth easily clinched the first game by a 21-11 margin in 16 minutes. In the second game, the former world No. 3 Indian started to loosen up a little, going up 11-9 at the mid-game interval. After the mid-game interval, Muzon tried to stage a strong comeback. He effectively countered Srikanth’s smashes and started dominating the court with his long smashes, building up a 16-13 lead. At one point it seemed that it will be difficult for the 23-year-old Guntur lad to return into the game, but Srikanth kept his cool and played few tight spinning net shots to grab the nail biting second game in 25 minutes.

India Outplayed by US in Women’s Hockey: The Indian women’s hockey team continued their dismal campaign at the ongoing Rio Olympics, suffering a 0-3 defeat to US in a Pool B encounter here.

Kathleen Bam (14th, 42nd minutes) struck twice for the Americans while Melissa Gonzalez (52nd) scored the third goal to hand the Indians their third consecutive defeat here on Thursday. The Indians, who have qualified for the Olympics after a gap of 36 years, thus suffered their third loss in four matches. They had start their campaign with a 2-2 draw against Japan before losing to Britain and Australia. The only point of worry for the US in Thursday’s match was the fact that they had earned as many as eight penalty corners but could not convert a single one.

Kathleen put the Americans in the lead with a spectacular solo goal, dribbling her way to the backline inside the Indian penalty area before cutting back to place a powerful shot past Indian goalkeeper Savita. The Americans continued to put the Indian defence under constant pressure with wave after wave of attack. The Indians were forced to defend in numbers inside their own half and the few attacks they did manage were effectively dealt with by the US defence. India however, managed to prevent their opponents from increasing the lead in the second quarter thanks to some desperate defending. But any hopes of an Indian comeback were quelled in the third period when Kathleen scored another field goal to double the US lead. Melissa heaped on the misery for India with another field goal in the closing stages to complete the rout.

IANS