Shooting at the Commonwealth Games: Jitu Rai, Manu Bhaker headline India’s well-balanced squad

Shooting has been India’s most successful Olympic sport for a reason, with a proven track record at most multi-sport events and boasts of a pool of talented shooters at every level.

At the Commonwealth Games level, the sport assumes even more importance given the number of medals on offer and India’s past performance. A total of 114 out of India’s 438 medals in CWG, it is second in the list of India’s most successful sports, and 17 out of India’s 64 medals at Glasgow 2014 came from the 30-member shooting squad.

At the upcoming Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, the expectation will be no different. India will look to the 27-member strong contingent to get a bulk of medals and add even more to the gold column, as it has in the past editions.

However, this time the expectation is not too exaggerated given India’s recent performance. In the recently concluded ISSF World Cup, India topped the medal tally for the first time with nine medals, equalling the total number of medals won throughout the last year with two World Cup events at home.

Shahzar Rizvi, Manu Bhaker, Akhil Sheoran and Om Prakash Mitharval won gold while Anjum Moudgil bagged a silver, and Mehuli Ghosh, Jitu Rai, Ravi Kumar and Deepak Kumar finished with bronze. Even before leaving for Mexico, Indian shooters have notched some stunning numbers in the Selection Trials and National Shooting Championship

Given this rich vein of form, it is natural to have great expectations from the shooters.

A balanced squad

The Indian squad has 15 men and 12 women, after the quota was reduced to 27 from an earlier allocation of 30. There are 19 gold medals on offer with nine disciplines for men and eight for women, and two in full-bore, which India does not participate in.

The Indian contingent has a good, strong mix of experience and youth with the NRAI picking three teenagers and three more shooters under the age of 25. The contingent also has 2014 Commonwealth Games medallists Jitu Rai, Gagan Narang and Apurvi Chandela along with experienced shooters like Heena Sidhu, Tejaswini Sawant, Sanjeev Rajput, Manavjit Singh Sandhu and world No 1 double trap shooter Ankur Mittal.

However all eyes will be on the young guns – teens Manu Bhaker, Mehuli Ghosh and Anish Bhanwala as well as Anjum Moudgil. With the exception of Bhanwala, all of them have won medals at the World Cup in Mexico, with 16-year-old Bhaker grabbing two.

Past experience

One factor that could prove to be crucial for India will be the past experience some of the shooters have at the Belmont Shooting Centre in Brisbane which also hosted the Commonwealth Shooting Championship back in November 2017. India topped the table with 20 medals – six gold, seven silver and seven bronze.

Of course, with the amount of expectations and scrutiny on the squad, a key factor in India’s performance will be how the shooters handle pressure. In the past, Indians have failed at the final hurdle far too often, with one wrong shot undoing all the good work. However, the rich haul of medals across competitions in the last year should give them confidence heading into the big event.

Gold Coast 2018 could well be the final hurrah for shooting at the CWG with Birmingham keeping the optional sport out of the program for the 2022 Games.