Quarter-miler Jisna Mathew in Indian squad for Asian Junior C'ship

Quarter miler Jisna Mathew, triple jumper Kamalraj Kanagraj, shot putter Ashish Bhalothiaand Ashish Jhakharare are some of the top names included in the 51-member Indian contingent for 18th Asian Junior Athletics Championships to be held at Gifu, Japan, which is to be held from June 7 to June 10.

The Indian team consists of 30 junior men and 21 junior women athletes.

Having finished overall third with 17 medals that included seven gold, four silver and six bronze medals at the last edition of the championships in Vietnam two years ago, India is hopeful of improving its ranking this year as a result of rising number of talented athletes at junior level.

"We have a good number of upcoming junior athletes. A lot of these juniors are part of our core group and they train in senior camps.Sreeshankar, Jisnaand Kamalraj have also competed at senior level and performed well. We are expecting a good show from our athletes in Gifu," said CK Valson, Secretary AFI.

Jisna Mathew, a PT Usha trainee with a personal best of 52.65s, has won a senior Asian championships bronze medal and represented India at the IAAF World championships in 2017. She was also part of the Indian women's 4x400m relay team at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

In triple jump Tamil Nadu's Kamalraj with a personal best of 16.41 has emerged as one of the most promising junior athlete. At senior level, Kamalraj represented India at 2018 Asian Indoors in Iran earlier this year and bagged a silver medal with a jump of 16.23m.

The Indian teams are as follows:

Junior Men- Gurindervir Singh, Akash Kumar, Prajwal Mandanna Kakera Ravi, Nithin Balakumar, Saneesh Santhosh, Nihal William, Rajesh Ramesh, Ayush Dabas, Devender Kumar, Cibbin Kumar, Anu Kumar, Sreekiran Nandakumar, Ankit, Ajeet Kumar, Sreeshankar, Kamalraj Kanagaraj, Ashish Bhalothia, Sahib Singh, Ashish Jakhar, Damneet Singh, Gurpeet, Kartik Kumar, Raghav, Sanjay Kumar, Juned, Kunnel Radhakrishnan, Aman, Lokesh Sathyanathan, Gaurav.

Junior Women: Jisna Mathew, Rachna, Subha Venkatesan, Nidhi Singh, Sunil Kumari, Sapna Kumari, Abhinaya Shetty, Gracena Merly, Kiran Baliyan, Anamika Das, Arpandeep Kaur, Durga Deore, Poonam Sonune, Seema, Suman Rani, Dhanusha Rukmini, Madhu, Priyadarshini Suresh, Sandra Babu, Karuniya Muthuramalingam, Deepanshi Singh.