Birmingham| When the fifth day of the Commonwealth games starts, India will be standing on the brink of history. Team India stands a chance of winning gold medals in Badminton, Table Tennis, and lawn Bowl events. If the Indian teams can clinch all three gold medals, it will be nothing less than a historic day for the nation.
The quartet of Lovely Choubey, Rupa Rani Tirkey, Pinki, and Nayanmoni Saikia, the proud team of the Lawn Bowls event have entered the finals and have the guaranteed silver medal. Keeping up with their high spirits and how far these four have come, they do not want to settle for anything less than a Commonwealth Gold. These four women are still in disbelief of how the games have panned out for them, but they certainly do have a shot at history.
The captain of the Lawn Bowls team, 38-year-old Lovely is a constable with Jharkhand Police while Rupa, who too is from Ranchi, works in the sports department. Pinki had picked up the sport in the 2010 edition of the Commonwealth games while Nayanmoni comes from a farming family in Assam and simultaneously works in the state's forest department.
Lovely and Rupa who hail from Ranchi believe that former India cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni put Ranchi on the world map but belonging to the same city they are just contempt with their countrymen knowing them and acknowledging them for their accomplishments.
"This is as big as the Olympics for us since lawn bowls are not part of the Summer Games. We lost the medal by one point four years ago but this time we have made up for that by making history. I hope this effort gives us some recognition. I got into Lawn Bowls in 2008 after leaving athletics.
I won Rs 70000 in a national event and told myself I could continue with this", said Lovely who used to be a 100m sprinter.
Lovely and Rupa have trained together for quite some time now at the RK Anand Bowls Green Stadium in Ranchi. Opening up on their struggles Lovely and Rupa say that the sport isn't as easy as it appears at times, the balls that they used are not found in India and have to be imported from Australia or England, and the facilities are also non-existent.
Lovely also opened up a lot on Dhoni and said that the former India captain knows their coach very well and often speaks to them about the sport. As the Lawn Bowl quartet eyes gold at CWG, they feel that things can change pretty quickly if they can clinch the gold medal for India.
(Inputs from PTI)
