Bindra shoots gold in Australia Cup

New Delhi: As India tries to come out of the shock loss in the cricket World Cup, there is some good news from other sports.

On Sunday, World Champion Abhinav Bindra won the gold medal in the men's 10m air rifle event at the Australia Cup in Sydney.

Bindra, who has returned to action after nine months due to a chronic backache, returned a score of 697.7 (594+103.7).

However, India failed to get the second medal in the event when PT Raghunath missed the bronze by a narrow margin of 0.3 points to finish four.

Raghunath was ahead of Bindra in the qualification round after shooting 595 but in the finals, he fired 101.6 that forced him out of the medal race.

Gagan Narang was fifth scoring 695.2 (593+102.2) with Sanjeev Rajput 15th (587) and junior World Champion Navnath Fartarde (595) 16th in a field of 27 shooters.

The silver medal went to Niccolo Campriani of Italy and Rajmond Debevec of Slovakia got the bronze though both had an identical score of 696.9 (595+101.9) after the finals.

Campriani won silver in a shoot-off, winning 10 to 9.

Indian women, too, had a good day with Tejaswini Sawant bagging her second gold in the competition by winning the 10m air rifle event.

She scored 498.7, which included 397 in the qualifications and 101.7 in the finals. She had won her first gold medal in the 50m rifle prone event on Saturday.

Meena Kumari won the bronze with a score of 497.8 (395+102.8) just 0.2 points behind silver medallist Katerina Kurkova while Anjali Bhagwat was fourth with a score of 497 (395+102).

Suma Shirur finished seventh with a score of 492.6 (393+99.6) while Avneet Kaur Sidhu, who faced problems in the target system during her match, could manage a score of 390 to finish 13th in a field of 20 shooters.

In the men's 50m free pistol event, Vivek Singh won silver with a score of 658 (560+98), Samaresh Jung was eighth with a score of 640.3 (543+97.3), Deepak Kumar a place behind with a score of 541 while Amanpreet Singh ended 13th with a score of 530.

The gold in this event went to Oleksandr Petriv ofUkraine with a score of 667.8 (569+98.8).

(With inputs from PTI)