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Individual Wrestling World Cup: Deepak Punia and Gourav Baliyan will fight for Bronze

Individual Wrestling World Cup: Deepak Punia and Gourav Baliyan will fight for Bronze
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By

Abhijit Nair

Published: 17 Dec 2020 5:20 PM GMT

In yet another disappointing day for the Indians at the Individual Wrestling World Cup, both Deepak Punia and Gourav Baliyan lost their semifinal bouts in the 86kg and 79kg respectively.

The 21 year old Deepak Punia cruised to the semifinals with two easy wins over Ivars Samusonoks of Latvia and the Israeli Uri Kalashnikov in his pre-quarterfinal and quarterfinal match respectively.

While, he defeated Ivars 14-7 without breaking a sweat, the win against Kalashnikov seemed even better as the Indian crushed him 8-0 to cruise in to the semifinal.

In an evenly fought semifinal against the Russian Dauren Kurugliev, the 2019 World Championship silver medallist went down 4-0. The Russian took a 4 point lead in the first half of the bout and then defended the lead in a highly composed manner to deny India's Deepak Punia any chance of a comeback.

On the other hand, Gourav Baliyan seemed unstoppable during the day as he crushed Aron Caneva of Italy and Alans Amirovs of Latvia to enter the semi-final of the 79kg category.

While the Italian Caneva was knocked out in the pre-quarterfinal with a victory by fall for Gourav, the Latvian went down 17-10 in the quarterfinal to send the Indian through to the last four.

In the semifinal bout, the 19 year old Gourav seemed of no match to the more experiend Akhmed Usmanov of Russia as he lost 10-0 on Technical superiorty.

The Indian didn't have even sniff of a chance in what as clincal display of wrestling from Usmanov. The Russian took a 7-0 in the first half and streched it to 10-0 within a minute of the second half of the bout.

The twin loss in semifinals today means that the 24 member Indian contingent will end the Individual World Cup without a single gold medal.

All is not lost though for both Deepak and Gourav as both the Indian grapplers stand a chance to leverage a bronze medal for their country tomorrow at 10:30pm IST.

Disappointment for Aware and Kadian

If Deepak Punia and Gourav Baliyan finished the day without any hiccups, the other two wrestlers in fray – Rahul Aware and Satywart Kadian were not up to the mark.

Competing in the 97kg category Kadian was sent packing after a 4-1 loss against Ertugurl Agca of Germany during the qualification round.

Rahul Aware on the other hand crushed Richard Vilhelm of Hungary 10-0 to win his 61kg pre-quarterfinal bout on technical superiority. The Indian though, failed to maintain this run and lost to Agustin Destribats of Argentina in the quarterfinal.

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