Six shooters, including World Junior Rifle Champion Navnath Fartade, have been dropped from the 22-member team for the ISSF World Cup in Munich.
NEW DELHI: Six shooters, including World Junior Rifle Champion Navnath Fartade, have been dropped from the 22-member team for the upcoming ISSF World Cup in Munich, Germany for their unimpressive performance in the recent competitions.
Fartade, Ronak Pandit, Sushil Ghaley, Deepak Sharma, Surendra Singh Rathore and Deepali Deshpande have been asked to practice in the country for the Asian Championships as their other teammates take part in the year's fourth and final World Cup for rifle and pistol shooters from May 28 to June 4.
After the Munich World Cup, Asian championships will be the last chance for shooters to book Olympic quota places and their may not be any more ISSF World Cup competitions in the 2008, which is the Olympic year.
A National Rifle Association of India official said the shooters' scores in ISSF World Cups at Fort Benning (USA), Sydney and Bangkok apart from Australia Cup in Sydney were not "up to the mark" because of which for the first time the NRAI acted tough on the players.
"We have removed six players from the team on the basis of their performance. They will now prepare for a place in the team for the Asian Championships," NRAI's Rajiv Bhatia said.
"Earlier teams never went on such long tours and players were selected on the basis of their scores in the national championships and selection trials.
"But this time we do not have much time and we will go by their scores in the recent competitions they participated in," he said.
Fartade shot a below-par 583 (MQS), 587 (MQS) and 586 in the three World Cups respectively in men's air rifle event which was way behind his tally of 596 in World Championships.
Pandit tallied 557 (MQS), 560 (MQS) and 567 in men's air pistol event and in the 25m rapid fire event, he fired 554 (MQS), 563 (MQS) and 550.
Rathore's men's rifle prone scores were 584 in elimination round (Ele), 588 (Ele) and 582 and 591 while Ghaley's hit 581 (Ele), 586 (Ele) and 581 (Ele) in the same event.
Sharma shot 565, 571 and 574 (all MQS) in men's air pistol event and 525 and 543 in (both MQS) in 50 m pistol event.
Deepali, the lone woman to be left out, scored 569 (Ele) and 572, 564 (Ele) 559, 562 (Ele) and 566 in women's rifle three position.
As many as 28 Indian shooters took part in the previous three World Cups. With the six shooters left out the team comprises 11 men and an equal number of women.
Team:
Men: Gagan Narang, P T Raghunath, Sanjeev Rajput, Abhinav Bindra, Imran Hassan Khan, Samresh Jung, Amanpreet Singh, Vivek Singh, Ram Kishan Yadav, Pemba Tamang, Vijay Kumar
Women: Tejaswini Sawant, Suma Shirur, Anjali Bhagwat, Avneet Kaur Sidhu, Meena Kumari, Shweta Chaudhary, Sonia Rai, Harveen Srao, Annu Raj Singh, Anissa Sayyed, Sushma Singh
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