Tokyo Olympics 2020 Day 2 Live Updates: PV Sindhu, Manu Bhaker, MC Mary Kom among Indians in action-Sports News , Firstpost

PV Sindhu, Manu Bhaker and the India men’s hockey team will be action on Day 2 of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

Day 2 preview: After a successful opening day that saw Mirabai Chanu open the nation’s account on the very first day of the Games and Sumit Nagal end a 15-year wait, Indian athletes will hope to add more medals to their tally on the second day of the mega event that finally got underway after getting postponed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Among the key Indian names in action on Sunday is PV Sindhu, who lost to Carolina Marin in the 2016 women’s singles final to win silver — one of the two medals India won in that event. Sindhu, who has since won World Championships gold among her many achievements, will be up against Israel’s Ksenia Polikarpova.

Also in action for the first time in Tokyo 2020 will be 2012 London bronze medallist MC Mary Kom, who will be up against Dominican Republic’s Miguelina Hernandez Garcia.

Additionally, the ten-time Olympic medallists India, who will be hoping to end their four-decade wait for an 11th medal, will be up against Australia in their second men’s Pool A game. They had collected their first points on Saturday with a narrow 3-2 win over New Zealand.

In table tennis, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran will be in action for the first time in his debut Games when he takes on Hong Kong’s Siu Hang Lam. Manika Batra, who got off to a winning start on Saturday, faces Ukraine’s Margaryta Pesotska.

Earlier on the opening day, weightlifting hero Chanu Saikhom Mirabai said her silver medal at Tokyo 2020 had been five years in the making since she missed out on an Olympic medal in Rio.

Mirabai, 26, finished second behind gold medallist Hou Zhihui of China in the 49kg women’s wrestling on day one of the Olympic weightlifting competition.

Mirabai, the 2017 world champion at 48kg, had failed to finish in the 2016 Olympics after recording no clean lifts in three clean and jerk attempts.

But she came back strong to aggregate 202kg in Tokyo and become a national hero at becoming India’s first weightlifting silver medallist, after Karanam Malleswari’s bronze in the women’s 69kg at Sydney 2000.

India, the second-most populous country in the world with 1.3 billion people, won just two medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics. But pundits and IOA president Narinder Batra have predicted the country’s medal count in Tokyo could reach double digits.