After a glittering opening ceremony, the Indian contingent will be in action in seven different sports on Saturday, with shooting, hockey, badminton and tennis being standout sports.
A Saturday full of action will start for India with Balraj Panwar competing in rowing, in the single sculls heats at 12:30 PM. Then, the focus will shift to shooting, with 10 m air rifle mixed team qualification scheduled for 12:30 PM, which will see teams of Sandeep Singh/Elavenil Valarivan and Arjun Babuta/Ramita Jindal in action. The shooting action will continue with the 10 m air pistol men’s and women’s qualifiers scheduled for 2 PM and 4 PM respectively.
The air pistol qualifiers will feature stars like Sarabjot Singh, Arjun Cheema, Manu Bhaker and Rhythm Sangwan in action. After some consistent shows in national and international events leading up to the Olympics, Team India would no doubt, be strong contenders for a medal in every category.
A standout event for India today will be the first round of men’s doubles tennis, which will feature India’s doubles star Rohan Bopanna teaming up with world No. 65 N Sriram Balaji in pursuit of maiden Olympic medal from 3:30 PM onwards. Having won a Grand Slam event, the Australian Open men’s doubles event with Matthew Ebden of Australia, Bopanna will be aiming to utilise his winning momentum, consistency and experience in his medal chase, which he narrowly missed out on in the 2016 Rio Olympics when he teamed up with Sania Mirza for mixed doubles but could just finish fourth.
From 11:00 PM onwards, some badminton action will kick off, with men’s singles and doubles and women’s doubles matches set to take place till 5:30 PM. The men’s singles medal prospect and Commonwealth Games champion, Lakshya Sen, India’s red-hot men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty and women’s doubles pair of Tanisha Crasto and Ashwini Ponnappa will have the spotlight on them.
At 7:15 PM, Indian paddler Harmeet Desai will be in action during the preliminary round in men’s table tennis singles competition.
From 9:00 PM, the Indian men’s hockey team, a major source of pride for the country in its Olympic history, would start its pursuit for a medal in their men’s Pool B match against a strong New Zealand team. After securing a bronze in Tokyo 2020 after over 40 years, the Men in Blue will be raring to go out there and play fearlessly to change the colour of their medal to gold.
At 12:02 AM in night, the boxing contingent of India will kickstart its campaign as well, with Preeti set to compete in round of 32 of women’s 54 kg category.
