Indian Sports Live Updates: March 18 — Sharath Kamal, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, and Sutirtha Mukherjee qualify for Olympics, Sindhu reached All-England Open Badminton 2021 quarters

Sathiyan beats Sharath, one win away from Tokyo Olympics qualification

Sathiyan Gnanasekaran beats Sharath Kamal 4-3 in Round 1 of the Olympic Table Tennis Qualification tournament in Doha.

Follow the results here.

Manika Batra, Sharath Kamal, and G Sathiyan look to qualify for Tokyo Olympics

Dhanalakshmi beats Hima Das; breaks PT Usha's meet record of 23 years

Dhanalakshmi beats Hima Das by a comfortable margin in the 200m event at the ongoing 24th Federation Cup Senior Athletics Championships currently being held in Patiala. What makes her timing more noteworthy is the fact that she broke a Meet Record. India's legendary sprinter PT Usha ran 23.30 seconds in 1998.

Read the full story.

Who is Ritika Phogat?

Ritika is the maternal-side cousin of Geeta and Babita Phogat. Many of the news portals across India have been sharing photos of Geeta and Babita Phogat in their articles, which gives a wrong connotation.

Read here.

Ritika Phogat dies by suicide

17-year-old Ritika Phogat, the maternal sister of wrestler Geeta and Babita Phogat, died by suicide after losing in a local wrestling match.

According to multiple reports, Ritika Phogat took part in the sub-junior and junior state tournament at Lohagarh Stadium in Bharatpur, which was held between 12 to 14 March. In the final, played on the last day, Ritika reached the final and lost by just a single point and the wrestler could not take the narrow defeat - thus hanging herself at around 11 PM.

Chance for Manika Batra to qualify for Olympics

In women's singles at the Asian Olympic Qualification tournament in Doha, Manika Batra and Sutirtha Mukherjee will go head-to-head. Thus, India is already assured of one quota as it will go to one of these two ladies.

As our correspondent Kapil Choudhary writes in this article, if Sutirtha beats Manika — the latter will get the quota even though she lost because Sawettabutt of Thailand has already qualified. But if Sutirtha loses, she'll need Paranang from Thailand to get South-Eastern quota to qualify.

We will update more on the possibilities as we inch closer to the game.

Athletics — Avinash Sable breaks own national record

Maharashtra's Avinash Sable created a new national record time of 8:20.20 seconds to win the 3000m steeplechase at the Federation Cup Senior National Athletics Championships in Patiala.

Having already secured Olympic qualification, Sable broke his earlier national mark of 8:21.37 in the World Championships in Doha.

Full details here.

Sai Praneeth, HS Prannoy, Sameer Verma, Lakshya Sen win

It was an overall good day for Indian men's singles. While Kashyap and Srikanth failed — there were four wins. Lakshya Sen beat Kantaphon Wangcharoen, Prannoy beat Darren Liew and will next face World No. 1 Kento Momota.  Sameer Verma and Sai Praneeth both win in two games and has a tough draw in the next round where they will face the second and third seeded players.

Srikanth falls, Sindhu marches on

Contrasting results from the two other top shuttlers with Kidambi Srikanth losing to a lower-ranked opponent Nhat Nguyen, going down in three games 11-21, 21-15, 12-21.

PV Sindhu on the other hand got the better of Malaysia's Soniia Cheah 21-11, 21-17 in 39 minutes to set up a Round of 16 clash against the young Line Christophersen.

Saina's husband knocked out as well

Earlier in the day, men's shuttler Parupalli Kashyap was knocked out by World No. 1 Kento Momota in his opening match.

“I’m in good shape but I could not figure out how to play him, at least at the start, and the beginning of the second game. I could play well in patches and push him to a stage where he got a bit nervous. He has a lot of wins with him so he’s confident. I can take some positives from the second game. It’s his first match and he was very good today for a first round, and he made very few errors,” Kashyap said after the match.