Top archers Deepika Kumari, Bombayala Devi, Tarundeep Rai to participate in national ranking event

India’s top archers including current world no. 2 and Commonwealth games gold medalist Deepika Kumari will participate in the 2nd stage of TATA National Ranking Archery Tournament (NRAT) starting Tuesday at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi.The prize-money at the tournament is sponsored by TATA Steel Ltd. and TATA Sons Ltd. The first stage of this tournament was held in February this year and players who were selected in the first stage will compete in various categories in stage 2 of the tournament. The various categories in this tournament are: Sub-junior, Junior and Senior.

In total cash prize of 50 lakh will be given to the winners and runner-up of various categories.

All ace senior archers of the country including Dola Banerjee, Deepika Kumari, Bombayala Devi, Rimil Buruily, Chekrovolu Swuro, Reena Kumari, V Pranitha, Tarundeep Rai, Jayanta Talukdar, Rahul Banerjee, Atanu Das, Mangal Singh Champia will compete in recurve category.

Abhishek Verma, Rajat Chouhan, Jignas, Ratan Singh, Ritul Chatterjee, Sandeep Kumar, Chinglen Sana, Gagandeep Kaur, Jyothi Surekha, Manjudha Soy, Jayalakshmi Sriharikonda, Parveena, P Lily Chanu will take part in compound category.

Archery Association of India President Vijay Kumar Malhotra was quoted as saying by Zee news, ” more than Rs 6 lakh would be awarded to the top four position holders as cash incentives in Sub-Junior and Junior categories and top eight archers in senior categories. It`s for the first time that any National Archery event registered with World Archery Federation.”

Team `A` comprising of players ranked 1 to 4 in 2nd stage of NRAT will participate in the 1st Stage Archery World Cup to be held at Shanghai from April 22-27 and Team `B` consisting of players ranked from 5 to 8 will participate in the 2nd Stage of Archery World Cup to be held from May 13-18.

Third and Fourth stage of NRAT will be held in May and June 2014 respectively.