Indian paddlers face easy rivals in preliminaries

Melbourne, Mar 15 (UNI) It is going to be easy outings for the Indian paddlers as both the men and women teams face weak opponents in the preliminary matches in the Commonwealth Games here tomorrow.

In pool 'C', Indian women are pitted against Fiji and the men will play against Kiribati and later Saint Vincent and Gre (SVG).

Indian team manager Dhanraj Chowdhary was confident that his players will win medals in the team and open events.

Talking to UNI here today, Mr Chowdhary said, ''I am not overstating the case. I am just stating the fact that if the players play to their potentials, then India has a good chance to improve upon their show in the last edition of the Games at Manchester.'' He said Achanta Sharath Kamal, Soumyadeep Roy, Subhajit Saha and Shibaji Dutta are in good nick and will give tough fight to their formidable rivals after the preliminaries.

''The boys have been playing well. They have undergone good training and coaching and I hope they will click both in the team as well as individual events.'' He also sounded optimistic about women players -- Poulomi Ghatak, Mouma Das, Nandita Saha, K Shamini and Kasturi Chakroborty saying they have in them the capability to finish at the podium.

''I think if the players play to their form, we have reasonably good chance of bagging couple of medals each in the team and individual events.'' ''I have told the players not to become complacent after the preliminary rounds. Yes we have easy first round matches but that will not reflect our strength or weakness. So players will have to take these rounds in their strides and be focus for the bigger and tougher rivals,'' he added.

UNI HSB AY RN1923