Guangzhou: India picked up two silvers in rowing and a bronze in shooting on the sixth day of competitions at the Asian Games yesterday, while tennis star Sania Mirza and squash exponents Joshna Chinappa and Dipika Pallikal powered their way forward.
However, India's challenge in the table tennis event ended as Sharath Kamal and Anthony Amalraj lost in the men's singles pre-quarterfinals.
Arvind Bhat bowed out of the pre-quarterfinals of the badminton men's singles.
With yesterday's medals, the country's tally rose to 16, inclusive of a gold, seven silver and eight bronze.
Rowers Anil Kumar, Saji Thomas, Ranjit Singh and Jenil Krishnan won a silver in the men's four event with an overall timing of 6 mins 16.79 seconds —10.39 seconds behind the gold medallist Chinese quartet of Sun Zhaowen, Wu Lin, Li Dongjian and Liu Kun.
In the lightweight men's four, Lokesh Kumar, Manjeet Singh, Rajesh Kumar Yadav and Satish Joshi finished second with a timing of 6 mins 13.32secs.
Shooter Vijay Kumar, who won three golds at the Delhi Commonwealth Games, settled for a bronze in the men's 25m centre fire pistol event, with South Korea's Byung Taek Park notching up the gold and China's Yadong Liu the silver.
Vijay shot a total of 583, while Park and Liu shot 586 and 585, respectively. India's Omkar Singh finished eighth with a score of 580 while Harpreet Singh was 32nd with a score of 563.
Gagan Narang, who had won two silver medals here, finished fourth in the men's rifle 3 position. Narang fired a total of 1261.8, with a 99.8 in the final round.
Sania Mirza powered into the women's singles second round while it was curtains for Poojashree Venkatesha at the Asian Games here Thursday.
Sania, ranked 166, outclassed Wing Yau Venise Chan of Hong Kong 6-1, 6-0 in 50 minutes and next faces 91-ranked Shuai Zhang of China, who is seeded sixth.
Shuai had defeated Sania in the quarterfinals of the Guangzhou Open in September.
Poojashree went down to seventh-seeded Kai Chen Chang of Chinese Taipei 2-6, 2-6.
In the mixed doubles, India's Sanam Singh and Rushmi Charkravathi overcame Uzbekistan's Vaja Uzakov and Nigina Abduraimova 7-5, 6-3 and next play seventh-seeded Japan's Yurika Sema and Hiroki Kondo.
Joshna and Dipika began their women's singles campaigns in style, scoring comfortable victories to enter the quarterfinals of the squash competition.
