Anjum, Smit among 27 shooters named for CWG

Tribune News Service

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Chandigarh, January 30 

City shooters Anjum Moudgil and Smit Singh have made it to the 27-member team for the upcoming Commonwealth Games to be held in Gold Coast, Australia.

Anjum has been named in the women’s 50m Rifle 3 Position event along with Tejaswini Sawant. She will also be participating in the 50m Rifle Prone event with Tejaswini Sawant. Shooter Smit Singh will represent India’s challenge in the skeet event.

Punjab’s Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Heena Sidhu and Manu Bhaker of Haryana have also been named in the squad. The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) announced the full quota of 27 shooters (15 men and 12 women) after the organising committee of the games reduced the country quotas across sports.

Though most of the disciplines will be held in Gold Coast, shooting will be held at the Belmont Shooting Centre in Brisbane from April 8 to 14. There will be nine men’s and eight women’s events in the three disciplines of rifle, pistol and shotgun.

“We have gone strictly by performance and merit as usual. For the Commonwealth Games, given the reduced quotas it was tough to have to leave out a few shooters who had shot consistently well over the considered period and we went for consistent top ranks across multiple events,” NRAI president Raninder Singh said.

“We believe we have a quality squad to match up and even better our performances of yesteryears. There are some exciting and extremely talented youngsters who will rub shoulders with established seniors and I am sure they will come out better with the experience,” he said.

The NRAI also named squads for the six International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup stages of this year. The junior shooters who have made it to the Commonwealth Games squad have not been selected for the Junior World Cups in view of the importance attached to the CWG.

The Squad: Men: 50m Rifle 3 Position: Sanjeev Rajput, Chain Singh; 50m Rifle Prone: Chain Singh, Gagan Narang; 10m Air Rifle: Ravi Kumar, Deepak Kumar; 25m Rapid Fire Pistol: Anish, Neeraj Kumar; 50m Free Pistol: Jitu Rai, Om Prakash Mitharwal; 10m Air Pistol: Jitu Rai, Om Prakash Mitharwal; Trap: Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Kynan Chenai; Double Trap: Mohd Asab, Ankur Mittal; Skeet: Smit Singh, Sheeraj Sheikh; Women: 50m Rifle 3 Position: Anjum Moudgil, Tejaswini Sawant, 50m Rifle Prone: Anjum Moudgil, Tejaswini Sawant ; 10m Air Rifle: Apurvi Chandela, Mehuli Ghosh;   25m Sports Pistol: Heena Sidhu, Annuraj Singh; 10m Air Pistol: Heena Sidhu, Manu Bhaker; Trap: Shreyasi Singh, Seema Tomar; Double Trap: Shreyasi Singh, Varsha Varman; Skeet: Saniya Sheikh, Maheshwari Chauhan.