India at Olympics Day 3: Sharath Kamal shines, Archers bow out; Manika, Bhavani leave their mark

Veteran Indian table tennis player A Sharath Kamal overcame a sluggish start to beat Portugal's Tiago Polonia in the men's singles second round. Sharath struggled in the first game but pulled himself up just in time to win 2-11 11-8 11-5 9-11 11-6 11-9 in 49 minutes to set up a clash with defending champion Ma Long from China.

Bhavani Devi's Olympic debut campaign ended in a fighting second- round defeat in the women's individual sabre event, the trailblazing Indian fencer bowing out with much promise. She began her campaign with a confident 15-3 win against Tunisia's Nadia Ben Azizi but bumped into world number three and Rio Olympic semifinalist Manon Brunet in the next round, which she lost 7-15.

Indian archers faltered at crucial moments against the mighty Koreans to make a quarterfinal exit from the men's team event at the Tokyo Olympics. After beating Kazakhstan 6-2, the Indian trio of Atanu Das, Pravin Jadhav and Tarundeep Rai lost in straight sets against the top seeds at the Yumenoshima Park.

The Indian men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty suffered a straight game loss to world number one Marcus Gideon Fernaldi and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo of Indonesia in their second Group A match at the Olympics on Monday, losing 13-21 12-21 in 32 minutes.

Sumit Nagal was blown away by world number two Daniil Medvedev's thunderous strokes and serves in the men's singles second round as India's tennis challenge all but ended at the Tokyo Games. He lost 2-6, 1-6 in just 66 minutes at court 1 of the Ariake Tennis Centre.

The women challenge ended with Manika Batra and Sutirtha Mukherjee losing to their superior opponents at the Olympics. Manika's impressive campaign in the women's singles came to an end with a 0-4 loss to 10th seed Sofia Polcanova in the third round. Sutirtha lost her second round match to Portugal's Yu Fu in straight games to crash out of her maiden Olympics.

Indian swimmer Sajan Prakash failed to qualify for the men's 200m butterfly semifinals at the Tokyo Olympics after finishing fourth in Heat 2. Prakash, who clocked a personal best of 1:56:38 in Italy last month to breach the A mark for Olympic qualification, could only manage 1:57.22 to finish 24th among 38 swimmers.

The Indian women's hockey team went down 0-2 to Rio Games bronze-medallist Germany, its second consecutive defeat in Pool A at the Tokyo Olympics. After the 1-5 drubbing at the hands of world no.1 Netherlands, the Indians lifted their game by a notch but it was not enough to get past world no.3 Germany at the Oi Hockey Stadium.