Spin duo of Shreyanka Patil and Mannat Kashyap starred with the ball after a sedate batting effort to guide the India U-23 team to the Women’s Emerging Asia Cup T20 title with a 31-run win over Bangladesh in the final. Electing to bat, India posted a modest 127 for seven before the bowlers rose to the occasion with Patil (4/13) and Kashyap (3/20) sharing seven wickets between them to bundle out Bangladesh for 96, in 19. 2 overs. Off-break bowler Kanika Ahuja (2/23) also chipped in with two wickets. It was complete spin show from the Indians with off-spinner Patil and slow left-arm orthodox Kashyap ruling the roost on a slow pitch. Sobhana Mostary and Nahida Akter scored 16 runs each, while Nahida Akter remained stranded on 17 not out for Bangladesh.
Chirag-Satwik pair rises to world No. 3
Fresh from winning their maiden Super 1000 men’s doubles title, star Indian shuttlers Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty achieved a career-best world number three in the latest BWF ranking. The Commonwealth Games gold medalists upstaged reigning world champions Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik of Malaysia in straight games to win the Indonesia Open, becoming the first pair from India to claim a Super 1000 event. The Indian duo is in the middle of a dream 2023 having won two World Tour titles already, besides the Swiss Open along side a gold medal at the Badminton Asia Championships.
Boxing will be part of 2024 Olympics
The International Boxing Association (IBA) was banished from the Olympic family, ending a years-long dispute fuelled by defying advice and instructions from the IOC. Boxing, however, will keep its status as an Olympic sport at the 2024 Paris Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted to derecognize the IBA at a specially called meeting chaired by IOC president Thomas Bach. The vote was 69-1, with 10 members abstaining. Boxing was never really in danger of being kicked out of the Olympics over the four years since the IOC suspended the sport’s governing body in an effort to force changes. “We highly value the sport of boxing. We have an extremely serious problem with IBA because of their governance,” Bach told IOC members during their online meeting.
WFI elections rescheduled to July 11
The Wrestling Federation of India’s (WFI) much-awaited elections were postponed to July 11, as opposed to the originally scheduled date of July 6, by the returning officer (RO) Mahesh Mittal Kumar – a retired Jammu and Kashmir High Court Chief Justice. With this, the last date for receiving the names of electoral college has also been extended to June 25, which was extended twice earlier too. The elections were rescheduled following objections raised by several states, namely Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Telangana, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, among others. It’s been learnt that Indian Olympic Association’s (IOA) joint secretary and acting CEO, Kalyan Chaubey, wrote a letter to Mittal Kumar, requesting him to postpone the elections after the Olympic body received several objections from the aggrieved states, which accused the previous regime headed by Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh of disbanding them on ‘frivolous’ grounds.
