look out for your timing! Check your moves, focus on your aim…" Archers Deepika Kumari and Rimil Buriuly, natives of Jharkhand, know each other's strengths, boost each other's morale and play as a team.
The Indian Recurve Women individuals - Deepika, Rimil, laishram Bombayla Devi and Dola Banerjee - won the women's recurve team final in Poland and have qualified for the World Cup Finals will be held from September 21 to 22 in Paris. Obviously, Jharkhand is celebrating.
Deepika's coach Purnima Mahto points out, "Though Rimil is a few years older than Deepika, they give healthy competition to each other, which is worth watching. Actually, the two have quite a lot in common. Moreover, they have been together since 2008, when they joined Jamshedpur's Tata Archery Academy." "luck favoured their being together - both internationally-acclaimed archers from the same State and travelling together to almost all the world tournaments," Purnima adds.
Rimil's coach Rupesh Kumar Singh agrees. "The long-time partnership has them responding well to each other. They are aware of each other's confidence levels. In fact, they even make up for each other's weaknesses and enhance strengths." Singh has been watching girls from the academy and is also archery coach at Jharkhand's Sports Authority of India (SAI) Centre.
From the very beginning, Deepika has been recurve specialist while Rimil began her initial days with compound archery events. "A recurve bow performer can play on compound bow but a compound bow archer cannot do the vice-versa. It is quite difficult. Surprisingly, Rimil had proved this technical fact wrong with her control on recurve shooting," echoed students of SAI Jharkhand while distinguishing the game perfection of these girls who along with others grabbed one gold medal at stage three and other at stage four for India.
As of now, these players have rare chances of home returning after their long abroad sports tour focusing the four World Cup stages at Shanghai (China), Antalya (Turkey), Medellin (Colombia) and Wroclaw (Poland) due to the fourth National Ranking Archery Tournament (NRAT) programmed at Maharashtra's Aurangabad district from September 4 to 7.
Talking to The Pioneer, Archery Association of India's Assistant Secretary Gunjan Abrol said that the Indian teams comprising women and men are supposed to return their nation on August 27 around 12 noon and leave for Aurangabad by 3pm. "Our brave archers have a fixed routine till World Archery Championships to be carried out in the month of October. Before that it is highly important for them to rehearse for the upcoming Archery World Cup final," Gunjan said.