Indian shooters set to improve on their tally

Melbourne, Mar 16 (UNI) Spearheaded by Olympic silver medallist Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and in-form Samresh Jung, the 27-member Indian shooting squad looks confident of improving upon their 2002 Manchester showing in this edition of the Commonwealth Games in their competitions which start here from tomorrow.

Shooting has always been India's strong point in these games and the Indians served notice to their rivals with some strong showing in the four-day Badge competition, an event held here in the run up to the main competition.

Samresh Jung, Gagan Narang, Abhinav Bindra, Tejaswinin Sawant and Avneet Kaur Sidhu's performance forced the critics and administrators alike to sit up and take notice of India as a formidable team in this sport.

Indian shooters won 24 medals, 14 gold 7 silver and 3 bronze, in the last edition at Manchester 2002.

The reason for the confidence in the Indian camp is due to consistent good performance and high scores in various competitions in the recent past.

The gold medal tally can go up here if they reproduce their form here. Australia poses the biggest challenge to the Indians. The hosts won 30 medals (11 gold, 13 silver and six bronze) in Manchester.

Indians have an edge over shooters from other participating nationa in most of the events but will face stiff challenge from the hosts particularly in shotgun and women's pistol events.

National Coach Sunny Thomas -- along with two foreign coaches Laszlo Szucsak and Csaba Gyorik -- is confident of good showing by the shooters.

''We should be able to maintain the 24 medal tally and hopefully increase it,'' said Thomas.

Apart from the badge competition, the Indians stamped their authority with excellent performance at the recently held Australia Cup where they won 11 gold out of the 13 at stake.

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