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Indian archers have had a strong run leading up to the Asian Games, with Ojas Deotale and Aditi Swami winning gold at the World Championships and Prathamesh Jawkar winning silver at the World Cup, being only the second Indian man to do so.
Despite these brilliant performances, the Indian team will have to step up if they want to improve their 2018 Asian Games performance, where they won two silvers.
India’s best medal chances will be in the compound discipline. World No. 8 Ojas Deotale recently won the World Archery Championships in Berlin, while World No. 14 Prathmesh Jawkar won silver at the Archery World Cup.
World No. 7 and India’s best-ranked archer, Abhishek Verma, is one of the other two archers in the lineup,along with Rajat Chauhan. Abhishek finished fourth at the World Cup just losing out on a medal. The pair will look to improve their performance from the 2018 Asian Games, where they won silver in the men’s team compound. With such a strong lineup, the men’s team compound is virtually guaranteed a medal.
On the women’s side in compound archery, the team is equally stacked. World No. 4 Jyothi Surekha Vennam, who recently won bronze at the World Championships, will look to add an Asian Games medal to her long medal record.
World Champion Aditi Swami will be eager to win a medal at her first Asian Games. The 17-year-old is ranked World No. 9, with Jyothi Vennam being the only Asian ranked above her. The other two female archers in the lineup are World No. 17 Avneet Kaur and World No. 20 Parneet Kaur. The women’s team won silver last time in Jakarta and will look to win the top prize this time.
Medal contenders in the recurve category
The recurve archery roster may lack veteran Olympians Tarundeep Rai and Deepika Kumari, but they still boast a formidable squad.
Dhiraj Bommadevara will be the best bet for a medal. The 22-year-old currently sits at his career-best World Ranking of 15, over thirty ranks above the next Indian, Mrinal Chauhan who will also be heading to Hangzhou. Also a part of the squad is the seasoned Atanu Das, who will look to win his first Asian Games medal. Tushar Shelke is the fourth Indian archer in the team ranked World No.163.
The recurve women’s team might struggle in the upcoming Asian Games. The best-ranked archer in the team is Bhajan Kaur at World No. 47. She won a bronze medal this year at the World Archery Youth Championships.
Leading the squad would be Ankita Bhakat, who is a gold medallist from the 2017 World Archery Youth Championships and is ranked 90th in the world rankings. The other two archers are Prachi Singh and Simranjeet Kaur.
Both the men's and women's teams won bronze medal in Archery World Cup stage 4 in Paris, and more can be expected from them in the upcoming Asian games.
