Hyderabad: Top Indian archers, including Atanu Das and Deepika Kumari, made first round exits as Sukhchain Singh clinched the senior recurve men’s title to lead a Services clean sweep in the National Ranking tournament, here on Sunday.
The 25-year-old Army Sports Institute archer Sukhchain, who has a world ranking of 218, created the biggest upset of the day when he eliminated India No. 1 Atanu Das 6-4 in the round of 16.
Das’s Tokyo Olympics teammates Tarundeep Rai and Pravin Jadhav also made first round exits, going down to Dhiraj Bommadevara and Sachin Gupta in shootoffs.
In the final, Singh defeated his Services teammate Rahul Nagarwal 6-2, while Dhiraj won the third place playoff defeating veteran Jayanta Talukdar.
In the women’s recurve section, World No. 2 Deepika Kumari suffered one of the shocking defeats of her career when she was eliminated by Telengana teenager Kadire Sindhuja 7-3 in the first round of 16.
Sindhuja however lost out in the second round, going down to Promila Dalmary of Assam 6-4.
Ankita Bhakat of Jharkhand emerged the champion in the women’s section, defeating Simranjeet Kaur of Punjab 6-4, while Ridhi of Haryana won the third place playoff.
Rajat Chauhan of Rajasthan and Jyothi Surekha Vennam of PSPB clinched the top honours in the compound men’s and women’s sections respectively.