Indian Sports Highlights, January 9: Mohun Bagan SG starts the campaign with a 2-1 win at Kalinga Super cup

Mohun Bagan starts their Kalinga Super Cup campaign with a come from behind win over Sreenidi Deccan in the group A clash. 

Both the foreign forwards, Jason Cummings and Armando Sadiku scores the goal after conceding an early goal to finish the match with a 2-1 win.

Harmeet Desai wins against top seeded World no.43 Benedikt Duda of Germany at qualifying round of WTT star Contender, Doha to book his spot in the main draw.

Manish Ganesh warmed the hearts of the local tennis enthusiasts as he breezed past Neeraj Yashpaul and entered the pre-quarterfinals of the Men’s Singles event in the ITF Mandya Open. In a first round match played at the PET Tennis Stadium on Tuesday, the Mysore lad was a 6-1, 6-1 winner.

In the only other singles match held on the day, Siddharth Vishwakarma overcame Adil Kalyanpur 6-3, 6-1 to make it to the last 16.

June 12, 2005, was when a certain 20-year-old striker stepped on to the pitch in Quetta, Pakistan, to clock his first international game for the Blue Tigers.

Nineteen years, 145 international matches, and 93 goals later, a 39-year-old Sunil Chhetri is seen going through a daily transformation, as he, along with the Blue Tigers, prepare for the upcoming AFC Asian Cup 2023, in Doha, Qatar.

For it is when the India captain takes to the pitch, that he transfigures himself into an 18-year-old playing for the love of the beautiful game.

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Indian athletes have been conferred with the National Sports Awards on Tuesday by President Droupadi Murmu in a ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi.

Indian shuttlers Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty won the coveted Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna award for their remarkable performances in 2023, when they won their maiden Asian Games gold -- a first for India in badminton --, while also clinching the Asian Championships title and the Indonesia Open Super 1000 title. No Indian doubles pair achieved these feats before Satwik-Chirag.

Other prominent names among the award winners were chess prodigy R Vaishali, shooter Esha Singh, wrestler Antim Panghal, para-archery sensation Sheetal Devi and cricketer Mohammed Shami. 

Full list of awardees

East Bengal clinches a close 3-2 win over Hyderabad FC in a group A clash to inaugurate the 2024 Kalinga Super Cup at the Kalinga Stadium, Bhuvneshwar.

Brazilian forward and the team Captain Cleiton Silva scores a brace and the Spanish player Saul Crespo, who came out as a substitute, scores the winner in the 80th minute.

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Ashwini Ponnappa and Tanisha Crasto - the winner of the Guwahati Masters and Odisha Masters in 2023 - hammered Francesca Corbett and Allison Lee of the USA 21-13, 21-16 to advance to the second round of the Malaysia Open. 

MR Arjun, making a comeback from an injury sustained at the Asian Games in October, lost in the first round of the Malaysia Open Super 1000 partnering with Dhruv Kapila. The Indian pair lost to Fang-Chih Lee and Fang-Jen Lee 16-21, 19-21.

Odisha FC signed defender Vignesh Dakshinamurthy from Hyderabad FC on a loan deal, the Bhubaneswar-based Indian Super League club confirmed on Tuesday. Vignesh made 71 appearances in the Indian Super League, the majority of them for Mumbai City FC. In the 2023-2024 season, the 25-year-old made six appearances for cash-strapped HFC and spent 294 minutes on the pitch.

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Rudrankksh Patil and Mehuli Ghosh clinched gold in the 10m air rifle mixed team event as the Indian pair beat the Chinese team of Shen Yufan and Zhu Mingshuai in the final at the Asian Shooting Championships 2024 in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Tuesday.

This is the first gold medal event in the rifle category for India after the country won four gold medals in 10m air pistol events on Monday.

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