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SportsAsian Games

Modi hosts Asian Games medallists, with both cricket gold teams in the room

Shreyas Iyer and Harmanpreet Kaur handed the Prime Minister signed jerseys at the Major Dhyan Chand Stadium, where he told the 85-medal contingent it had made the country proud.

From the editorial desk · New DelhiPublished
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India women's captain Harmanpreet Kaur (file photos)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India women's captain Harmanpreet Kaur (file photos)Photos: Narendra Modi / Wikimedia Commons; Bahnfrend / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0

Key points

  1. India won 85 medals, 21 of them gold, at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games.
  2. Both cricket teams retained their Asian Games titles, beating Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the finals.
  3. Modi repeated India's aim to host the 2036 Olympics.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met India’s Asian Games contingent at the Major Dhyan Chand Stadium in New Delhi on Thursday, and the two cricket teams that won gold in Aichi-Nagoya were among the guests.

Shreyas Iyer, who led the men’s T20 side, and Harmanpreet Kaur, whose last assignment as women’s captain was the Asian Games, each presented Modi with a jersey signed by their teams. ICC chairman Jay Shah came with the contingent, and Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet’s successor as captain, posed alongside her. The archers gave the Prime Minister a signed compound bow and the hockey teams signed sticks.

“You have made 140 crore Indians proud,” Modi told the athletes. He pointed to how young some of them were. “This time, at the Asian Games, several members of Team India were just 15 to 17 years old,” he said. “This shows that age is no barrier to success.”

He also returned to the Olympic bid. “We are bidding for the 2036 Olympics and it is our resolve that we will host the games,” he said.

India finished fourth in the medal table with 85 medals, 21 of them gold. That is down from 106 at Hangzhou. Debutants won 41 medals, and women athletes 38, including 11 golds.

Both cricket teams defended the titles they won in 2023. The men beat Pakistan by 19 runs in the final, making 211 for 6 and holding them to 192 for 6, with Abhishek Sharma hitting 61 off 28 balls. The women beat Sri Lanka by 147 runs.

The ceremony fell in the middle of a busy week for both sides. The men had lost the fourth T20I to West Indies in Hyderabad the night before and play the decider in Bengaluru on Saturday. The women start a T20I series against Zimbabwe in Raipur on Friday. The BCCI also put off an IPL stakeholders’ meeting planned for Thursday evening in Mumbai so that its officials could attend.