The Indian men's hockey team's hopes were dashed on Thursday as their attempt at obtaining back-to-back Asian Games gold medals was halted by Malaysia in their semifinal match-up. The women's team, however, is already in the final and they play Japan in the gold medal match today evening as we look ahead to what's in store for team India on Friday at the 2018 Asian Games.
The men's and women's squash teams are in semifinal action - the women are up against the powerhouse Malaysian team while the men take on Hong Kong. Both Dipika Pallikal and Joshna Chinappa lost to Malaysian opponents in their singles semis and they are now faced with taking down the same opponents once again. It is a daunting proposition indeed.
Two Indian boxers have made the final four - Amit Panghal and Vikas Krishan. Vikas is looking to improve on his bronze medal showing from four years ago as he fights Abilkhan Amankul of Kazakhstan in the Men's 75kg event. The Kazakh is a silver medal winner from last year's World Championships and bronze medalist from last year's Asian Championships. So it is not going to be an easy task.
Amit, in the Light Fly 49kg category, is up against young Filipino boxer Carlo Paalam.
Three out of India's four paddlers have made it to the pre-quarterfinals of the singles competition in table tennis. Manika Batra on the women's side, and, Sharath Kamal and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran on the men's side, are in round of 16 action today.
The sailing competition concludes tomorrow with a few of the Indian sailors in medal contention.
The bridge teams also continue their challenge on the penultimate day of that competition.
Here is the complete schedule for Friday:
Boxing
(4:45 pm) Men's Light Fly (49kg), Semifinals - Amit Panghal vs Carlo Paalam (PHI)
(6:00 pm) Men's Middle (75kg), Semifinals - Vikas Krishan vs Abilkhan Amankul (KAZ)
Bridge
(8:00 am & 1:00 pm) Men's Pair, Semifinal 3 & Final 1 - Pranab Bardhan/Shibnath Sarkar, Subhash Gupta/Sapan Desai, Sumit Mukherjee/Debabrata Majumder
(8:30 am & 1:00 pm) Mixed Pair, Semifinal 3 & Final 1 - Bachiraju Satyanarayana/Kiran Nadar, Rajeev Khandelwal/Himani Khandelwal
(8:30 am & 1:00 pm) Women's Pair, Semifinal 3 & Final - Aparna Sain/Feroza Chothia, Hema Deora/Marianne Karmakar
Canoe/Kayak Sprint
(7:30 am) Canoe Single (C1) 300m Women, Heats - Meera Das
(7:50 am) Kayak Single (K1) 200m Women, Heats - Ragina Kiro
(8:10 am) Kayak Single (K1) 200m Men, Heats - Naocha Singh
(8:30 am) Canoe Double (C2) 200m Men, Heats - Prakant Sharma/Jamesboy Singh
[Semis for above events 2:30 pm onwards]
Cycling
(7:52 am) Men's Keirin, Round 1 - Ranit Singh & Esow
(8:26 am) Women's 3000m Individual Pursuit, Qualification - Chaoba Devi [Finals @ 2:57 pm]
Diving
(12:25 pm) Men's 3m Springboard, Preliminary - Ramananda Sharma
Hockey
(6:30 pm) Women's Gold Medal match - India vs Japan
Judo
(7:42 am onwards) Men's 100 kg, Round of 16 - Avtar Singh vs Ivan Remarenco (UAE)
(8:36 am) Women's +78 kg, Quarterfinals - Rajwinder Kaur vs Akira Sone (JPN)
(Quarters, semis and finals later on in the day)
Sailing
(10:30 am onwards)
Men 49er, Race 15 - Varun Thakkar/Ganapathy Chengappa (currently 4th)
(10:35 am)
Women 49er FX, Race 15 - Varsha Gautham/Sweta Shervegar (currently 2nd)
Laser Radial, Race 12 - Nethra Kumanan (currently 5th)
(10:40 am)
Open Laser 4.7, Race 12 - Govind Bairagi (currently 4th), Harshita Tomar (currently 3rd)
Mixed RS One, Race 15 (India currently 8th)
Soft Tennis
(7:30 am onwards)
Men's Team Preliminary, Group C
India vs Cambodia
India vs Indonesia
India vs Japan
Women's Team Preliminary, Group A
India vs Mongolia
India vs Korea
India vs Thailand
Squash
(9:30 am) Women's Team, Semifinals - India vs Malaysia
(2:30 pm) Men's Team, Semifinals - India vs Hong Kong
Table Tennis
(10:30 am) Women's Singles, Round of 16 - Manika Batra vs Wang Manyu (CHN)
[Women's quarters scheduled to begin @ 1:30 pm]
(9:30 am) Men's Singles, Round of 16 - Sharath Kamal vs Chuang Chih-yuan (TPE)
(11:30 am) Men's Singles, Round of 16 - Sathiyan Gnanasekaran vs Kenta Matsudaira (JPN)
[Men's quarters scheduled to begin @ 2:30 pm]
Volleyball
(7:30 am) Women's Tournament, Classification 9-10 - India vs Taipei
(All times in Indian Standard Time)