Commonwealth Games 2018: India's women gymnasts off to impressive start; men's lawn bowls team ousted

Gold Coast: India’s women gymnasts began their campaign in the Commonwealth Games on a positive note as Pranati Nayak, Pranati Das and Aruna Reddy dished out an impressive performance on Friday. Vault specialist Pranati Nayak and Aruna did well scoring 13.300 and 13.200 respectively and were ranked first and second on vault after Sub Division 1. There are four Sub Divisions in women’s event after which the qualifiers are decided for vault finals. [caption id=“attachment_4419637” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representative image. Reuters[/caption] In all around Pranati Das emerged with the highest score among the Indians followed by Aruna and Pranati. On her performance, Aruna, a bronze medallist at the World Championship, said, “It was a good experience. We trained a lot for the competition and now it is a good opportunity for us to improve for coming competitions.” On her performance on the vault, she said, “I am disappointed. I was supposed to do it much better, but in the execution, I went out of the line two times.” Asked about her performance and her chances of qualifying in the vault, Pranati Nayak said, “I tried my best, and we will see.” On Thursday, India, led by Ashish Kumar, finished ninth and last in the gymnastics men’s team event. The Indian men’s lawn bowls team bowed out of the Commonwealth Games after suffering a 14-15 defeat to England in men’s triples on Friday. India, represented by Chandan Kumar Singh, Sunil Bahadur and Dinesh Kumar, lost in men’s triples, section A, to England’s David Bolt, Jamie Chestney and Robert Paxton at Broadbeach. Pinki lost to Litia Tikoisuva of Fiji in the women’s singles section D, round 2 and then suffered another reverse against Firyana Saroji of Malaysia in round 4.