Badminton:Arvind and Kashyap lose in French Super Series

Arvind Bhatt, P Kashyap and Aditi Mutatkar fell by the wayside as Indian shuttlers made a disappointing start in their French Super Series campaign in Paris on Wednesday.

Unseeded Arvind was no match for top seeded Chong Wei Lee of Malaysia, who took just 26 minutes for a 21-14, 21-3 victory in the first round of the men’s singles, while Kashyap was shown the door by Chinese Yi Lu, losing 8-21, 16-21 in 34 minutes.

The only Indian in the women’s singles, Aditi also met with the same fate. However, she gave a tough fight to third seed Mi Zhou of Hong Kong before losing 21-17, 11-21, 9-21.

A face saver for the Indian Women’s Hockey Team

While the IHF has been in turmoil, the Women;s hockey team has been quietly going about its job. It failed to get a berth in the Olympics. But as a face saver they thrashed France 7-0 in the round robin league of the Olympic Qualification Tournament. France anyway was less fancied and India was expected to dominate the proceedings and they indeed did.

Nevertheless, there will no Indian playing in Hockey at the Olympics.

http://sports.indiatimes.com/India_maul_France_7-0/articleshow/2985810.cms

Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess Tournament

Vishwanathan Anand beat Kramnik in the rapid game in the first round of Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess Tournament being held in Nice, France. After drawing with Vladimir Kramnik in the opening blindfold game, world champion Viswanathan Anand [ defeated the Russian in their rapid match in the first round of the Amber Blindfold and Rapid chess tournament in Nice, France [

Anand emerged as a joint leader in the rapid and combined standings after beating Kramnik.

In the rapid, the Indian is joined by Armenia’s Levon Aronian while in the combined standings it is a five-way lead between, Anand, Aronian, Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria and Ukrainians Vassily Ivanchuk and Sergey Karjakin.

It was in the return game that the Indian ace proved superior to Kramnik after the latter slipped from a position of strength.

It was a Queen’s Indian defense where Anand played black and Kramnik looked in control when the middle game commenced.

The Indian ace had to find counteractive measures on the king side amidst wild complexities when Kramnik missed the thread of the position and found his king in a checkmate web.

It was a picturesque finish as Anand sacrificed his queen to force matters. The game lasted 43 moves.

Earlier, playing the white side of a Petroff defense in the first game of the tournament, Anand followed the variation he had played against Kramnik some time back but the Russian, who is also the defending champion here, was adequately prepared and drew without much ado.

The event is being played on a round-robin basis between 12 players. Each players plays against the other twice in blindfold and then in rapid and the combined score is taken to decide the winner