Weight & watch
The Khurda District Weightlifting Association has selected a team of 19 weightlifters for the upcoming state-level sub-junior and junior championships at Titilagarh on November 9 and 10. The selection was hosted at the Utkal Karate School last week. Out of 50 participants at the selection camp, 12 girls and seven boys were chosen for the championships.
Pitch champs
Captain Swagatika Rath proved her mettle by leading the Odisha team to a 38-run win over Bengal in their fourth and last league match of the East Zone Under-19 Women’s Cricket Tournament in Guwahati.
With this win, the state team qualified for the knockout round, which the West Zone is scheduled to host from November 7 to 20. Swagatika scored 43 in just 51 balls and in reply to Odisha’s total of 96 in 44 overs, while Bengal was bundled out for 58 in 34.4 overs. Swagatika, Siprarani Rout and Sushree Dibyadarshini Pradhan bagged three wickets each. Odisha had earlier defeated Tripura and Jharkhand, but lost to Assam and ended their campaign with 12 points. However, the men’s team had a disappointing run, as Punjab defeated it by an inning in a Ranji trophy match. There is another good news for cricket lovers of the state.
The first Woman’s Cricket Academy in Odisha is going to be set up in Balangir. Secretary of Odisha Cricket Academy (OCA) Ashirbad Behera announced this on Monday when he was visiting the town to attend a felicitation event organised by the District Athletic Association at the Gandhi Stadium. Balangir has achieved the rare feat of producing two international players in women’s cricket. Madhuri Mehta and Roshnara Parveen continue to play for India at the international level. The Under-19 CK Naidu Trophy match between Odisha and Karnataka will be jointly organised by OCA and District Athletic Association at the Gandhi Stadium from November 29 to December 2.
Shuttlers’ brigade
The Odisha State Badminton Association recently announced the state sub-junior teams that include Under-13 and Under-15 for both boys and girls for the forthcoming sub-junior national to be held at Cuttack from November 10 to 16. The players have been chosen for both singles and doubles segments. This is the 27th edition of the tournament and the national event is being hosted in the state for the first time.
On target
Odisha archer Ranjit Naik has qualified to represent India in the 2014 Youth Olympic Games to be held at Nanjing in China. According to Odisha Archery Association secretary Sradhananda Das, 16-year-old Naik, a Plus-Two first-year arts student of Bhubaneswar-based Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), qualified for the Youth Olympics by performing well in the cadet recurve individual qualifying round of the Youth World Archery Championship, which was held in Waxi in China from October 10 to 20. Naik belongs to Jadabani village of Mayurbhanj district and was placed among the top 15 archers before finishing sixth.
Kalinga kick-off
The most-awaited football event of the state, the All-India Kalinga Cup Football Tournament has begun from Sunday. On the opening day, Odisha Police beat Birla Tyres 3-1, while Sunrise Club beat Friends and Friends 1-0.
Organised by the state sports department and Football Association of Odisha (FAO), the tournament includes 16 teams battling it out for the title. The teams include eight reputed clubs from outside the state, four semi-finalists of the FAO first division league - Odisha Police, Jobra Durga Club, Rising Students Club and Sunrise Club and four semi-finalists of FAO Inter District Club Championship - Birla Tyres of Balasore, Independent Sporting Club of Mayurbhanj, Government Sports Hostel of Cuttack and Friends and Friends of Bhubaneswar. The tournament has a cash prize of Rs 3 lakh for winners and Rs 2 lakh for the runners-up.
Racquet rockers
City boy and top seed Avilash Mishra won the boys’ singles champion in the AITA-OTA Under-16 Talent Series Tennis Tournament at Bhubaneswar Club in the state capital on Monday. A trainee of S.S. Tennis Academy, Avilash won the title after a cakewalk match against academy partner Nishant Kumar, 6-0, 6-0. Earlier in the semis, Avilash beat sixth seed Pratyush Chhotray, while Nishant got the better of eighth seed Nishant Mohanty in straight sets.
Organised by Khurda District Tennis Association, the girls’ singles event was cancelled in the tournament due to inadequate entries. Subhransu Charan Sarangi, well-known coach, has been recommended by All-India Tennis Association to attend the 18th international tennis coaches’ worldwide conference to be held at Cancun, Mexico, from November 5 to 9. This will be Sarangi’s fourth exposure in the world forum, the first being in 1999 at Casablanca (Morocco), second being in 2009 at Valencia (Spain) and third being in 2011 at Port Ghalib (Egypt). A former player, Sarangi has been grooming players at S.S. Tennis Academy here for over seven years.
Namita Panda and Sudeep Kumar Guru
