India had won the mixed team gold at 2018 CWG for the first time and Chirag feels they can repeat the performance this year too.
India's leading badminton player Saina Nehwal has dropped four places to be No 9 in the latest world rankings while P V Sindhu remains No 10 despite winning a silver medal in the Rio Olympics.
General Zhao Zongqi is well known in India for having commanded the Chinese troops during the Dokalam episode. Zhao knows every inch and corner of the Indian border, at least the Eastern and Central sectors, including the Naku La area which witnessed fist-fights between Indian and Chinese troops in April/May. Claude Arpi introduces us to the PLA generals masterminding the Chinese aggression in Ladakh.
Reigning World champion P V Sindhu and B Sai Praneeth were handed easy group stage outings in the badminton draws unveiled on Thursday for the Tokyo Olympics, starting on July 23.
In a miraculous rescue operation, 114 trapped workers were pulled out alive from a flooded mine in north China, nine days after water gushed into it, even as search continued for the 39 missing persons.
China shrugged off badminton's biggest Olympic scandal to sweep all five titles at London four years ago but the Asian super-power is trying to keep a lid on expectations of another bumper gold medal haul at the Rio de Janeiro Games. The peerless team that set up the 'Great Haul of China' in London will line up almost unchanged at Rio, anchored by men's singles great Lin Dan and women's champion Li Xuerui. So strong were the Chinese in 2012 that they swept the titles without the reigning world champion women's doubles pairing of Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang, who were expelled from the tournament in disgrace.
The Tibetan nation still lives under the yoke of the Chinese Communist Party, and Beijing today has a guilty conscience; this creates a great uneasiness for Xi Jinping and his colleagues observes Claude Arpi.
World no 10 men's doubles pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, however, are expected to face a stiff challenge in the league stage.
The Indian challenge ended in the French Super Series badminton tournament after Saina Nehwal and the mixed doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and V Diju crashed out following defeats in the quarter-finals in Paris. Eighth seed Saina squandered a first game lead and went down to top seed Chinese Wang Lin 21-15, 11-21, 15-21 in a 49-minute battle in the women's singles on Friday.
Saina lost 9-21, 12-21 in the women's singles clash that lasted just 24 minutes
India's campaign in the Aviva Singapore Super Series came to an end on Friday after both Saina Nehwal and Anup Sridhar lost their respective quarter-finals. Tournament sixth-seed Saina went down 21-19, 19-21, 14-21 to China's Wang Lin in the women's singles while qualifier Sridhar's dream run was cut short by Thailand's Boonsak Ponsana. The Indian lost 11-21, 8-21.
A day after unheralded grappler Sakshi Malik opened India's medal count with a dramatic bronze-winning effort, shuttler P V Sindhu is all set to further showcase Indian women's capabilities at the Olympic on Thursday.
World No 1 Saina Nehwal is all set to defend her women's singles title at the Australian Open super series .
Seven soccer players from former S.League club Liaoning Guangyuan have been charged with match-fixing, the Singaporean league said on Wednesday. The Chinese club, who played just one season in Singapore, was kicked out at the end of the 2007 season.
Ace Indian women's shuttler Saina Nehwal wrote a new chapter in badminton history when she won the Indonesian Open Super Series in Jakarta on Sunday. The 19-year-old World junior champion beat China's world No 3 Wang Lin 12-21, 21-18, 21-9 to become the first Indian to win a Super Series event.
Summary of sports events and persons who made news on Tuesday
Bhaker shot 244.7 to claim the top prize in the prestigious season-ending tournament
India's top military and strategic brass on Tuesday reviewed the overall situation in eastern Ladakh amid indications that the latest round of talks between senior military commanders of Indian and Chinese armies on the next phase of disengagement of troops may not have produced encouraging results, people familiar with the developments said.
China has expelled four table-tennis players in accordance to an unwritten law in the country that bans romance while training.
They picked gold medals in the men's 85kg and women's 58 kg events respectively at the Afro-Asian Games.
Kidambi Srikanth, the centre of attention in the Rio Olympics on Wednesday, can take heart from Hyderabad city mate P V Sindhu for his men's singles quarter-final clash against Chinese badminton icon Lin Dan.
Defending champion Saina Nehwal entered the pre-quarterfinals but it turned out to be a disastrous day for the men with all of them, including reigning champion K Srikanth, failing to cross the opening hurdle at the Yonex-Sunrise India Open Super Series badminton.
Srikanth blew two game points in the second game to lose 7-21, 20-22 to Axelsen in the men's singles summit clash.
'The Chinese will be gunning for revenge now after Sindhu's victory.'
Sindhu and Saina will once again be India's best bet as they look to put up a good show this week.
Saina Nehwal and PV Sindhu continued their winning run at the Malaysia Open notching up contrasting victories to reach the quarter-finals of the women's singles competition at the USD 550,000 Super Series Premier tournament.
India's No 1 shuttler Saina Nehwal has been seeded fifth and compatriot P V Sindhu ninth in the women's singles at the upcoming Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. In the men's draw, Kidambi Srikanth, who is ranked world No 11, is seeded ninth.
A summary of sports events and sports persons, who made news on Wednesday
At the talks, the Indian side insisted on complete disengagement of Chinese troops at the earliest and immediate restoration of status quo ante in all areas of eastern Ladakh prior to May 5 when the standoff began following a clash between the two armies in Pangong Tso, they said.
Kashyap, who has been battling a series of injuries in the last few years, defeated Hao 21-7, 12-21, 21-18 in a match that lasted an hour and three minutes.
Sources said the process of disengagement along the Line of Actual Control is "complex", and in such a context, speculative and unsubstantiated reports need to be avoided.
'Badminton at this level is a mental game.' 'Often just one or two points makes the deficit and often it's upstairs on the first floor that these things happen.'
Did Xi deliver a message to Modi at Mamallapuram, which though couched in a velvet glove was time-bound? What was that message? It is clear Indian/Israeli/US spy satellites would not have missed detecting Chinese troop movements towards the Ladakh-Tibet frontier. Then why did some important functionaries in the Government of India choose to only ask the Russians about this in April 2020? Was Russian reassurance of Chinese troop movements being part of a routine exercise the reason that the Leh-based XIV Corps did not mobilise itself for its annual summer exercises near the LAC? A fascinating excerpt from Iqbal Chand Malhotra's new book Red Fear: The China Threat.
Others on the list include Warren Buffett and Astrid Menks.
India added a silver and bronze to swell their medal tally to six in their controversy-ridden Asian Youth Games campaign on the fifth day of the multi-sporting event, in Nanjing, on Tuesday.
The sources said both sides held extensive deliberations on modalities for disengagement of troops from all the friction points in eastern Ladakh at the talks.
RInstead of disengagement, the Indian and Chinese armies have deployed an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 soldiers each along the LAC. The PLA has deployed S-400 air defence missiles to neutralise the IAF's advantage in air power
The decision to disengage the forces, locked in a bitter standoff for the last six weeks in eastern Ladakh, was taken at a nearly 11-hour-long meeting between senior Indian and Chinese commanders in Moldo on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on Monday.
After losing the first game, the 24-year-old Indian rebounded strongly to clinch a 15-21, 21-13, 21-13 win over Wan Ho in a gruelling second-round clash that lasted almost an hour.
Senior commanders of the two armies held intense negotiations for nearly 11 hours on Sunday at a designated meeting point in Moldo on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control.
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