Man Singh to compete in Shotgun World Cup

Olympian and World Cup silver medallist Mairaj Ahmad Khan will not be shooting the World Cup in Acapulco and Sheeraz Sheikh had also been rested, after he had done a commendable job of making the final.

Mairaj Ahmad Khan will not be shooting the World Cup in Acapulco.

Former Asian champion Man Singh will compete in the shotgun World Cup in Acapulco, Mexico, from March 19 to 26. Even though he had competed in all the four World Cups last year and had made the final in one, Man Singh had placed ninth in the list of skeet shooters in the merit list charted after the national championship and two selection trials for the current season.

However, the skeet coach Ennio Falco who had brought in the fourth-placed Sheeraz Sheikh in place of the second-placed Amrinder Singh Cheema for the World Cup at home recently, had exercised his power to have a say for one shooter in the squad to keep Man Singh in the loop.

Olympian and World Cup silver medallist Mairaj Ahmad Khan will not be shooting the World Cup in Acapulco and Sheeraz Sheikh had also been rested, after he had done a commendable job of making the final.

The young Angad Vir Singh Bajwa who was in the race to make the final in the World Cup and had won the mixed skeet bronze with Halley Dunn of the US in a high quality field also stays in the squad.

Amrinder Singh Cheema got back his assured berth for having vacated his spot in the Delhi World Cup, leaving the coach a chance to revive the hopes of Man Singh who had placed tenth in the World Championship in Granada in 2014.

Such a right for coach has been restricted only to skeet, and thus there will be no change in the men’s trap and double trap teams. Zoravar Singh Sandhu, Kynan Chenai and Birendeep Sandhu will make the team, while none of the women trap shooters have been found eligible to compete as they had not achieved the Minimum Travel Score (MTS) of 67.

Thus, former World Champion and six-time Asian champion Manavjit Singh Sandhu continues to cool his heels.

In double trap, Ankur Mittal who won the silver in the World Cup recently in Tughlakabad will compete along with the 14-year-old Shapath Bharadwaj.

Skeeet shooter Rashmee Rathore will be the only woman in the squad of nine, as Saniya Sheikh had been rested despite figuring in the original entry list.

The team: Zoravar Singh Sandhu, Kynan Chenai, Birendeep Sodhi (trap), Ankur Mittal, Shapath Bharadwaj (double trap), Angad Vir Singh Bajwa, Amrinder Singh Cheema, Man Singh (skeet), Rashmee Rathore (women’s skeet).