Headed for ISSF Junior World Cup after finishing third at World University Championship, Indian shooters stuck at airport

What's the story?

India has been at the receiving end of tremendous success overseas with the wonderful performance of the shooting team in the World University Shooting Championship that summed up on Sunday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

However, despite their sweet success story, the travel plans of a group of the decorated shooters, who will be taking part in the ISSF Junior World Cup in Australia, was deferred due to bad arrangement issues by the University which cropped up and left them stuck at the Kuala Lumpur airport.

Requesting @Ra_THORe Ji to extend help to Indian shooting squad stuck at Malaysia Airport. These shooters, Anmol Jain, Ela Venil, Arjun Babuta & Aditi singh are taking part in Junior Rifle Shooting Cup in Aus. Some bad arrangements by Univ team has got them stuck in Malaysia pic.twitter.com/ope0smJZbS

— Manjinder S Sirsa (@mssirsa) March 18, 2018

In case you didn't know...

The tournament was a major success with India (3 gold, 2 silver, 3 bronze) finishing third on the medal tally among 24 teams, right behind Italy (5 gold, 5 silver, 1 bronze) and Korea (4 gold, 1 silver, 5 bronze).

The heart of the matter

The Sports Minister, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore was asked to direct his attention to this issue and he took cognizance of the matter. Since then, the matter has been sorted and the shooters are on their way to Australia.

Thank you for drawing my attention to this @mssirsa ji. We at @IndiaSports @Media_SAI have taken cognizance of the matterSeems there was confusion on part of immigration authorities. The matter has been sorted.Squad is now on its way to Australia & my best wishes are w/ them. https://t.co/CUCuAK8EO6

— Rajyavardhan Rathore (@Ra_THORe) March 19, 2018

Earlier, Gauri Sheoran stunned everyone after barely qualifying with a score of 371 but she proved her worth in the finals with a perfect five, as she beat Wang Xiaoyu of China 37-33, and bagged the gold medal.

There was more success for Indian women in air rifle, as the team won the gold apart from the silver and bronze medals by Meghana Sajjanar and Elavenil Valarivan. A close encounter with Russia gave way to the women winning the gold here.

Also, the third gold which India achieved was in the men’s air pistol category, as the trio of Anmol Jain, Achal Pratap Singh Grewal and Nishant Sindhu helped the team beat Russia by nine points for the gold.

After such incredible success, it's sad that they are stuck in the airport and instead of being celebrated they have been estranged.

What's next?

The young shooters will be taking part in the ISSF Junior World Cup which has started on 19th March and will go on till 29th March in Sydney, Australia.

Author's take

India being the vast country that it is, is busy winning accolades in all corners of the world. Sadly, unlike football and cricket, shooting doesn't get its fair share of takers and therefore the success stories often go unnoticed. However, the timely intervention of the Sports Minister has sorted the issue that cropped up.