Divij-Purav win in Mexico
New Delhi: Aiming their second title of the season, Divij Sharan and Purav Raja made a confident start at the ATP Challenger event in Guadalajara, defeating Marco Chiudinelli and Yuichi Sugita in straight sets.
The unseeded Indian pair, who were runners-up last week at leon, won 6-4 6-2 against the Swiss-Japanese combo in the first round of the $ 100,000 hard court event. However, they have a tough task at hand as they face third seeded formidable pair of Rajeev Ram and Benjamin Becker in the quarter-finals on Thursday.
Mohun Bagan beat Mumbai FC
Kolkata: Mohun Bagan rode on Odafa Okolie’s late strike to pip Mumbai FC 3-2 and came out of the relegation zone in the I-league, here on Wednesday. After missing a penalty in the first half, the Nigerian forward bounced back in style striking twice (52nd and 90+6th), including the injury-time winner. Earlier, Australian recruit Tolgay Ozbey had given them a 35th minute lead at the Kalyani Stadium. Mumbai found their goals through Darren Caldeira (56th) and John Coutinho (88th) in the rescheduled round-14 fixture. It was Mohun Bagan’s hattrick of wins in the I-league as they climbed to 12th place, on goal difference, to come out of the drop zone. Mumbai FC remained on 30 points from 23 matches.
Saina gets easy draw
New Delhi: In the absence of top Chinese shuttlers, Indian ace Saina Nehwal has been seeded number one and handed a relatively easy draw in the upcoming Yonex Sunrise Indian Open badminton tournament, scheduled to be held here from April 23-28. The london Olympics bronze-medallist will open her campaign against unseeded Belaetrix Manuputi of Indonesia in the women’s singles event. She had beaten her comfortably in the All England Badminton pre-quarterfinals last month. The Hyderabadi is not likely to be challenged much in the first two rounds but may face some threat from compatriot P V Sindhu, who is seeded eighth in the competition.
sports minister slams IOA
New Delhi: Sports Minister Jitendra Singh expressed disappointment on Wednesday over the IOA holding the Sports bill responsible for the country’s suspension from the Olympic movement, terming it as “very, very unfortunate”. “I am deeply shocked and upset after reading the contents of the letter. It is delayed tactics. As far as the Sports bill is concerned, priority of the government is to get the bill passed by both the houses of the Parliament and make it into a law,” said Jitendra. “IOA coming out with the excuse that only because of the Sports Bill, the Indian body has been suspended by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is very, very unfortunate for sports.”
Gurbani leads at Army golf
New Delhi: Gurbani Singh played the best round of the week with a back nine that had four birdies as she rose from tied seventh to the very top of the leaderboard at the end of two rounds of the Usha Army ladies and Junior golf championship, the season-opener on the Women's circuit. PNS/Agencies