Nagoya: Driven by Elavenil Valarivan’s individual brilliance, India opened their Asian Games medal account with a couple of silvers in shooting, while locking an unexpected podium finish in Mixed Martial Arts and making an authoritative push towards a second successive women’s cricket gold in Nagoya Sunday.
Some other notable performances of the day included massive opening wins by both the men’s and women’s hockey teams and bright starts in the badminton and table tennis team competitions.
However, the 27-year-old Valarivan, who ended up medal-less in her past two Asian Games appearances, was the undisputed star of the day.
The 2025 World Championship bronze-medallist landed an individual women’s 10m air rifle silver with 252.4 points, just 0.6 behind Japan’s Hinata Taichi, who clinched gold with an Asian Games record 253.0.
This was after Valarivan combined with Sonam Uttam Maskar and Games debutant Vidarsa Vinod to fetch a second-place finish in the team competition.
“Congrats to Elavenil Valarivan for winning a Silver Medal in the 10m Air Rifle Women Individual event at the Asian Games. This was her second medal of the day, making this even more special. My best wishes to her for the endeavours ahead,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X, taking note of her fine run on the day.
“Hard work and teamwork lead to an outstanding result! Proud of Sonam Uttam Maskar, Elavenil Valarivan and Vidarsa K Vinod for winning the Silver Medal at the Asian Games 2026 in 10m Air Rifle Women’s event,” he added.
Valarivan’s exploits came within hours of 36-year-old Suchika Tariyal’s stunning entry into the women’s traditional 60kg semifinals of Mixed Martial Arts, a discipline that is making its debut at the continental showpiece. She defeated Mongolia’s Altanchimeg Baigalmaa 2-0 in the last eight stage to be assured of at least a bronze.
Tariyal has dabbled in judo and even won international medals for India after learning the combat sport to fight the trauma of street harassment as a 12-year-old.
She shifted to MMA, which combines striking, takedowns, grappling and ground fighting inside a competition cage, in 2024 and won gold at the first and second MMA-SFI National Championships.
She followed that up with bronze medals at the third and fourth Asian Mixed Martial Arts Championships in January and May this year.
Cricket stars on course for gold
At Nisshin city, there was no stopping the rampaging Indian women’s cricket team, which accounted for Bangladesh in a massive 114-run win to enter the finals of the competition and stay on course to defending its gold.
Star of the show was explosive opener Shafali Verma, who logged her maiden T20 International hundred off just 49 deliveries that powered India to 195/4, which Bangladesh expectedly failed to chase.
In a repeat of the previous edition’s final, India will face Sri Lanka in the final on Tuesday after the island nation knocked Pakistan out of the competition.
Goal rush in hockey
Both the Indian men’s and women’s hockey team registered statement wins in their opening pool matches at Kakamilgahara. While the women routed Uzbekistan 19-0, the men hammered Indonesia 13-1.
For women, the most destructive performance came from 22-year-old striker and drag-flicker Deepika Sehrawat, who smashed a record eight goals. Among men, Dilpreet Singh stood out with four strikes.
Both teams were interestingly dressed in saffron despite pre-event assertions by Hockey India President Dilip Tirkey that they would revert to blue after an “unauthorised” shift to saffron during last month’s World Cup in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Strong starts by shuttlers and paddlers
India’s men’s and women’s table tennis teams began their campaigns with identical 3-0 wins over Indonesia in their respective Group F openers. The women then fought back to script a 3-2 win over Singapore in their second ground match.
The men, however, endured a 0-3 loss to Iran in their second group match.
At the Ichinomiya City Municipal Gymnasium’s badminton court, India cruised past a lowly-ranked Kazakhstan 3-0 in the women’s team event, setting up a challenging quarterfinal against hosts Japan.
Led by the redoubtable PV Sindhu, the Indian team, also featuring Unnati Hooda, and Tanvi Sharma, completed a comfortable sweep without dropping a game.
Heartbreak in Teqball
India’s Quimcy D’Souza was on the verge of making history in the hitherto unknown sport of teqball but lost both her women’s singles and mixed double bronze medal matches.
The 24-year-old Quimcy pushed the Japanese world No. 7 Yuina Sakamoto to the limit in the women’s singles bronze-medal match, but went down 0-2 (11-12, 11-12) to miss a podium finish.
Just five minutes later, she turned up again at the same arena along with Mohamed Anas Beg for another shot at a historic medal in the newly-introduced sport.
They, however, lost the mixed doubles bronze match to Vietnam’s Hoang Minh Tan Nguyen and Gia Ngih Trinh 0-2 (9-12 6-12).
In another disappointment, MMA fighter Varun Sanyal could not compete after passing out during a sauna session at his cruise ship accommodation because of which he was declared medically unfit for his event here.
Swimmer Rishabh Das clocked 54.77 seconds to finish sixth in the men’s 100m backstroke final. Das clocked 26.56 seconds at the 50m mark, and finished 2.79 seconds behind China’s Xu Jiayu, who won the gold medal with a time of 51.98 seconds.
In wushu, India’s Suraj Singh Mayanglambam finished 11th in the men’s changquan final. Competing against a 21-man field at the Aichi Prefectural Martial Arts Hall, Suraj scored a total of 9.683 points.
PTI