Cheema, Sushil win bronze each for India on last day

Doha, Dec 14 (UNI) Palwinder Cheema and Sushil Kumar won a Bronze each on the last day of the wrestling competition as the Indian grapplers completed their assignments with six medals -- a Silver and five Bronze -- in the Asian Games here today.

Cheema overpowered Kazakhstan's Marid Mutalimov 3-1 in the 120 kg freestyle event to finish third.

The Indian, who had won a bronze at the Busan Asiad also, fought well against Kazakh and pipped him 3-1 on classification points.

Earlier, Sushil Kumar warded off another Kazakh challenge when he scored a technical 3-1 victory over Leonid Spiridonov in the 66kg freestyle category.

Sushil was the pick of the Indian wrestlers as he advanced to the bronze medal round after he won his quarterfinal bout against Uzbek Arslan Khutaliyev but lost to Takafumi Kojima of Japan 0-5 in the semis.

Meanwhile, Cheema won his opening bout against Kyrgyz wrestler Urmat Mustapaev but then lost to Iranian Masoumi Valadi Ferdin in the quarterfinal. He defeated Iraq's Shaheen Mohamed in the repechage to progress to the Bronze medal round.

Among the also-rans were Vinod Kumar (55 kg) and Anuj Kumar (84 kg) and both failed to go past the quarterfinals.

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