Abhishek Verma to battle for gold in Archery World Cup

On a day when most Indian archers failed to live up to expectation, Abhishek Verma kept his arrows on target to romp into the men's individual compound final of the World Cup - third leg here on Thursday.

Verma went past his Italian quarter final opponent Michele Nencioni 147-143 and then pipped Steve Anderson of the US 146-145 in the semis.

After nine arrows each, he was down 86-87, but rallied back with three successive 10 pointers in the 4th to open up a 116-115 lead over the American at the Szczytnicki Park.

It proved to be the turning point of the contest as both archers carded 30 with their last three arrows.

Verma will now battle it out for the gold against Esmaeil Ebadi of Iran on Saturday.

In the women's recurve individual category, all four archers namely Deepika Kumari, Laxmirani Majhi, Rimil Buriuly and Bombayla Devi Laishram failed to make an impact and lost their respective encounters in the first few rounds.

In the men's recurve individual segment, the Indian quartet of Rahul Banerjee, Mangal Singh Champia, Jayanta Talukdar and Bulbul Marandi suffered the same fate as none could even qualify for the quarter-finals.

Jyothi Surekha Vennam could have given her country a chance to clinch another medal but she lost out to Crystal Gauvin of US in the compound women's individual quarterfinal 140-147.