Indian shooting team for CWG 2018 announced

The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) announced a 27-member Indian shooting team for the upcoming Commonwealth Games, which will be held in Gold Coast, Australia, in April.

Commenting on the announcement, Raninder Singh, President, NRAI, said that they have selected the squad based entirely on merit.

"We have gone strictly by performance and merit as usual. For the Commonwealth Games, given the reduced quotas it was tough to have to leave out a few shooters who had shot consistently well over the considered period and we went for consistent top ranks across multiple events. We believe we have a quality squad to match up and even better our performances of yesteryears. There are some exciting and extremely talented youngsters who will rub shoulders with established seniors and I am sure they will come out better with the experience. We wish them all the very best," he said.

For the Commonwealth Games, scheduled to be held in Brisbane, Australia on April 4, there are nine men's and eight women's events scheduled in the three disciplines of Rifle, Pistol and Shotgun.

This year, the Organizing Committee of Commonwealth Games has reduced the country quotas across sports and 15 men and 12 women could be fielded by India as a result in the shooting disciplines, down from 30 previously.

The NRAI also finalised the senior and junior National shooting squads for 2018 as well as for the six International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup stages for the year.

The juniors who have made it to the Commonwealth Games squad have not been selected for the Junior World Cups in view of the importance attached to the Commonwealth Games.

The teams are as follows:

Men: Sanjeev Rajput, Chain Singh, Gagan Narang, Ravi Kumar, Deepak Kumar, Anish Bhanwala, Neeraj Kumar, Jitu Rai, Om Prakash Mitharwal, Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Kynan Chenai, Mohd. Asab, Ankur Mittal, Smit Singh and Sheeraz Sheikh.

Women: Anjum Moudgil, Tejaswini Sawant, Apurvi Chandela, Mehuli Ghosh, Heena Sidhu, Annuraj Singh, Manu Bhaker, Shreyasi Singh, Seema Tomar, Varsha Varman, Saniya Sheikh and Maheshwari Chauhan.